The Heart of the Herd
by corvusdraconis
Summary: [HG/SS]: Neville cultures a rare plant sacred to the centaur in the hopes of curing his parents so his children can get to know their grandparents. He brings it to Hermione to analyze in the hopes he can use it to heal their condition. Things do not go as planned.
1. Chapter 1 Well Crap

**A/N:** If you were following my tumblr (corvusdraconis), then you know where THIS story came from. This story is most definitely AU/Post Hogwarts, and so many people are alive that canonically died.

Help, I'm posting without supervision because I didn't want to stack more onto my poor Beta! I'm sorry for any mistakes you may find. Rest assured, when she does get to it, I will repost.

 **Chapter 1: Well** **…** **Crap**

Neville Longbottom shuddered as he stepped into the Potions classroom and gave a small shudder. Years had been spent in dread of the Potions classroom, and becoming a Auror turned professor had not dispelled the sensation of dread that came over him the moment he walked near the threshold of the entryway.

"Neville," Hermione's warm voice called to him from beside a cauldron. "How are you doing?"

"Good, Hermione," Neville said with a smile.

"Hannah doing well?" Hermione asked with a small curve of her lips. "Pregancy treating her well?"

Neville blushed. "She craves the oddest things at the oddest times.

"Is that why you are here?" Hermione chuckled. "To beg for my secret recipe dilly beans and a jar of my special tomato sauce?"

Neville slumped. "Is it so obvious?"

Hermione laughed. "Only Hannah would inspire you to walk into the Potions Classroom for any reason, Neville, even if I am the one teaching in it."

Neville flushed. "I know I shouldn't hold the room against you, Hermione, but… hell, I don't even know why you let them rope you into training under S…nape when you had a perfectly good Ministry job."

Hermione snorted. "Politics was not the life for me, Neville. I could ask you the same, as from what Harry said, you made a perfectly respectable Auror."

"I always understood plants better than people," Neville rationalised. "At least when the venomous tentacula tries to kill you, you know it's not personal."

Hermione arched a brow. "So, what is the the flower pot?" Hermione asked, pointing her thumb at the bundle in Neville's arms.

"Oh!" Neville replied. "It's a horse moon flower. Well, at least, I think it is. Legend says that when these flowers were common, the centaurs roamed the land far more than they do now. Have you heard of it? Okay that was stupid of me, of course you have."

Hermione shook her head in amusement. "I know only what was written in the tomes in the library, Neville. It was the sacred flower amongst the centaur because when Chiron was poisoned and begged Zeus to let him die like a mortal rather than live forever in pain, his blood spilt upon the ground and the horse moon flowers sprung from his blood."

Neville nodded.

"They say, the flowers are what brought civility to the centaur, purging the drunken lawlessness that once plagued the centaur race," a low rumbling voice said from the doorway. "It's pollen gifted our people the ability to reason and feel shame, but also gave us knowledge of the the cosmos and prophecy, hunting and archery, as well as medicine and music."

"Firenze," Hermione greeted warmly. "Come in, my friend."

The palomino centaur squeezed himself through the door by ducking his head. "I thank you for enlarging the door for me, Hermione. The human-sized doors were… painful."

Hermione smiled. "I should open them up a little more. I keep forgetting how tall you are, Firenze."

"Nay, my two-legged sister, the door is fine. I can duck. I am more gladdened that I do not get stuck like a crab in a crab trap," Firenze chuckled.

"Crab sounds wonderful," Hermione replied with a grin.

"I will take you when we next leave to check our traps," Firenze said with a grin. "The colts and fillies will adore having someone to show off their prowess."

Hermione smiled at the thought of the young centaur scrambling along the shore to pull up the crabbing traps. "It amazes me how fast your people work when it comes time to harvest," Hermione said with a swift grin. "Even the young."

"We are a hunter and gatherer people, Hermione," Firenze said warmly. "Our life depends on efficiency."

Hermione tapped her head. "Knowing it and seeing in action are separate things." Hermione seemed to realise something. "Neville, are you trying to study the moon flower to see if it can help your parents?"

Neville gave a small but grim smile. "Yeah. There are many legends and even fewer factual studies, but one thing many of the legends seems to agree on is that it has healing properties. Maybe one of them… can help my mum and dad. I haven't been able to get one to bloom yet, but, maybe you could take a look at it? Study the sap? I'd really… I'd really appreciate it if you could."

Firenze peered at the small, almost innocuous, flower bud. "They say, amongst my people, that the flower blooms for the centaur, and only those with a centaur's heart will ever see it bloom for them. Even fewer will accept the gift it bestows."

"Believe me, if it helps my parents, Firenze," Neville said, "I would accept whatever gift it bestowed."

Firenze snorted, shaking his head, his mane falling about his shoulders. "My people are weaned on the stories that all gifts come with a price. The price of our civilisation came with the death of the greatest of our kind. We have great knowledge of the stars and cosmos, yet, because of how we look, few humans take us seriously. We are ageless once grown, yet, gone are the days when we were all immortal as well. Our colts and fillies are cherished because our numbers are not as they used to be. There is always some greater balance."

"My parents have already paid a price a hundred times over," he said shakily. "Surely that means something."

Hermione touched Neville on the shoulder, giving Firenze a sympathetic look. "I don't think Firenze means that your parents aren't deserving of a cure, Neville. He just means that the flower may have some side effects that make the possible positive effects harder to swallow."

Neville slumped a little and sighed. "I'm sorry, Firenze. I've just…"

Firenze shook his mane. "It is no trouble, Neville. We would all do many things for those we care about—you, your parents and I, my herd."

Neville shoved the pot into Hermione's hands. "Please, Hermione. Will you test the sap? Scrapings? Anything that might test positive for healing properties? Pomona tells me that mixing it with the other healing tinctures could have disastrous effects if I can't figure out what the base nature of the plant is." He trailed off, mumbling. "Please, Hermione. I want… I want my children to know their grandparents."

Firenze touched Neville's arm. "Neville," he said gently. "I know your quest for your parents is of great concern, but the horse moon flower was never meant for healing humans."

Neville looked torn.

Hermione touched his shoulder. "Look, Severus and I have a tea meeting tonight after rounds are done. I'll examine your flower, but if nothing comes of it, Neville, I don't want you to obsess over it."

Neville flinched as Hermione mentioned the DADA professor.

"The tomato sauce is in the second cupboard on the left in my storeroom, Neville," Hermione said, distracting him. "The dilly beans are on the fifth shelf to the right." She cradled the moon flower and pushed Neville towards the store room.

As Neville scurried off to get the jars of food, Firenze stared at the moon flower with concern. "I know you do not believe in divination, Hermione. I know you do not like to believe in fate, but will you forgive me for believing in them for your sake?"

Hermione tilted her head and stared at the centaur curiously. "What are you asking, Firenze?"

Firenze placed a hand on her cheek, gently running a thumb across her skin. "Some things cannot be changed, Hermione. Some fates cannot be averted anymore than Mr Potter could avoid his. Do you believe such things, Hermione?"

Hermione searched her friend's eyes. "You're talking with your head in the stars again, Firenze. I can never be sure what you are saying."

"Will you forgive me for believing in what you do not?" Firenze asked softly.

"Firenze, there is nothing to forgive," Hermione reassured him.

"You know, when you saved Bane's life from that poacher's trap, he said you had the heart of a centaur," Firenze recalled. "Did you know that was why our herd claims you as our sister?"

"I thought it was because you called me that," Hermione confessed. "Severus helped me save him too, you know. It wasn't just me."

Firenze gave a subtle smile. "Bane spoke for him too. High regard from one such as he—a humbling I never though to see from my herd brother."

"He was in pain, Firenze. He needed help," Hermione justified. "Anyone would have done the same."

Firenze shook his head. "No, sister. Not anyone. There are even those amongst my herd that would have contemplating his being caught in a poacher's trap as being cosmic karma."

Hermione made a face.

Firenze stared at the unopened flower. "Some gifts are earned, my sister, and they are delivered by the hand unknowing. I pray you do not think me selfish for hoping that one of people's legends are true."

Hermione touched the flower bud with her fingertip. "What legend is that, Firenze?"

Firenze hummed. "The horse moon flowers bloom for only handful of reasons and they will bloom only when the time is right. One is to create more moon flowers when the moon and stars are harmony, another is to announce the birth of a new centaur, and another is to bring peace to a mind seeped in violence or drunkenness. But, there is another reason the flower is said to bloom. To the worthy, it is said, the greatest gift is given, but the legends do not specify exactly what that is."

"Vague, my friend," Hermione chuckled. "Perhaps a vacation day in the middle of O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s week where I do not have to grade assignments."

Firenze chuckled. "Perhaps it is best that people do not know what the legends specify, lest our forests be swamped in humans looking for the moon flowers like your friend, Neville."

"Please do not be angry with him for abducted one of your flowers, Firenze," Hermione said with concern. "I know Bane takes any trespass in the herd's territory for any reason very poorly, even when Magorian tells him otherwise.

Firenze shook his head. "I will not reveal his crime to my herd, Hermione. To him, it is just an normally innocuous flower with the possibility to help his parents. I only wish it could. I fear he will be… disappointed."

Hermione touched the flower with her fingertip. "I will look at it. Perhaps, we will both be surprised. If not, well, at least I will have tried. I do want to help him find a treatment for his parents. He has lost faith in potions, I think, because they failed his parents, but he continues to try and make these herbal remedies instead. Pomona said that was the reason he took up being the Herbology Apprentice when he first quit being an Auror. As an Auror, he couldn't help his parents, but around many exotic plants, there was a chance he could."

Firenze seems thoughtful. "Pomona always had a respect for the life of the forest," he said after a moment. "The centaur had no ill with her. She was safe wandering our woods. We allowed her to take cuttings for herself because she always asked respectfully."

Hermione nodded with a small smile.

Neville returned with a few jars of dilly beans and tomato sauce in his arms. He was bruised across his face and wore a frustrated expression.

Hermione's eyebrows raised. "You opened the jars on the wrong shelf, didn't you Neville?"

Neville sighed. "Why didn't you tell me you were keeping black-claw face-punchers in a jar in the storeroom?"

Hermione and Firenze raised brows simultaneously.

"She is the Hogwarts Potion's Mistress, Mr Longbottom," a deeper voice intoned from the doorway. "What self-respecting Master or Mistress of Potions would not have a jar of black-claw face-punchers sitting in the storeroom?"

Neville froze in place, his eyes slowly sliding to the side to stare at the tall and foreboding figure of Severus Snape.

Snape's arms were crossed across his chest, pulling his cloak closer to his chest as his narrowed eyes glared at Neville.

Neville's hardened years as an Auror went fleeing down the corridors as Snape stared at him, and he gulped involuntarily. "Thank you for the sauce and dilly beans, Hermione. I will tell Hannah that she owes you for them."

Hermione snorted slightly. "Go home and take care of Hannah, Neville. I will let you know tomorrow if I found out anything with your flowery friend here."

Neville looked relieved. "Thanks, Hermione."

The Herbology professor nervously shuffled out of the Potions Laboratory, skirting past Severus with a quick rustle of his professor's robes.

"And what have you volunteered me for, Professor Granger?" Severus asked knowingly.

Hermione gave him an affronted look. "Who would do such a thing, _Professor_ Snape?" Hermione quirked her lips as she emphasised the word professor. They had long since disposed with titles and last names, at least when students were not around, but Hermione could always tell when he was irritated when he relapsed into calling her Granger, Professor Granger, or the dreaded Ms Granger. Oddly enough, the dour wizard would often flinch when Hermione called him by his title in return, perhaps realising that Hermione's use of his given name had a far more appealing tone that he preferred to hear.

Five plus years as Master and Apprentice had, at the very least, put them on far better terms than they had been as teacher and student. They had formed a rapport that most of the staff at Hogwarts approved of. Minerva had said that since Hermione had come on staff, Severus was actually quite tolerable to be around. Severus' answer had stated, "well at least she isn't an insufferable know-it-all eleven-year-old anymore."

All of the snide jibes aside, Hermione had settled in well to the teaching side of Hogwart's life, and her Master's project had been the creation of an herbal healing balm for the centaur that worked like Dittany did on humans. The balm had a bit of an extra kick and was crafted using the natural and traditional plants the centaur normally used in their healing. She had mixed them until the effects were maximised and used it on Bane when he had been caught in a poacher's trap.

Since then, the truce between the centaur and Hogwarts included both the students and staff instead of only "the foals" as long as those entering the Dark Forest did not travel too close to the colony's main encampments without permission or escort by one of the centaur.

Firenze, now fully accepted back into his tribe, continued to teach Divination at Hogwarts, much to Trelawney's dismay, and students were taught traditional divination for their third year elective, centaur-centric divination for their fourth, and then they were allowed to choose a concentration for the years after. Students seemed to be equally divided between traditional and centaur divination, which appeased Trelawney's thought that she would lose her job to loss of interest.

Despite the drama between Trelawney and Firenze, life at Hogwarts had simmered down to a dull roar of almost subdued magical education. Students were given far more opportunities to express themselves with their magic, had far less stresses put upon them without a Dark Lord looming on the horizon or a Chamber of Secrets basilisk trying to murder them. House competition was still encouraged in regards to points, but students were encouraged to study together and make friends in all the houses. Courtyards were filled with mixed and mingled House members, and fanatical House loyalty was saved for the Quidditch pitch.

Minerva had implemented a new point system that rewarded team work, and students found that helping each other reach their goals gave them more points than blinding serving their own House. Gryffindor and Slytherin saved their rivalry for sports, but within the last few years, both Houses managed to mingle their tables in the Great Hall without starting brawls. The very halls of Hogwarts seemed to breathe out a sigh of relief, and as if to celebrate, the moving stairwells managed to behave for long stretches of time without trying to buck some poor student off onto the wrong floor or plummet to their untimely death.

Minerva had requested that Severus take the position of Deputy Headmaster when he adamantly refused to retake up the position of Headmaster from her. He stated that she would have been the most obvious logical choice had the war not worked out as it had, and he was just happy that he'd survived Nagini's attack to even return to life let alone teach.

The tabby Animagus seemed to much more sympathetic after the war. Harry's announcement in front of Voldemort had cleared Snape's reputation where no amount of reassurance from Albus Dumbledore had been able to. Neither of them were going to be bosom buddies after the war, but they had settled into something less immediately hostile. Harry seemed to finally realise that while Professor Snape was a git, he wasn't completely heartless, and Snape had finally come to terms with the fact that Harry was not completely the clone of his father.

Albus' written confession of what he had done for the ever nebulous greater good had done the rest to heal the rift caused by Severus' supposed betrayal of the Headmaster, and many of the old staff had begun to realise that Severus hadn't been the only one to harbour secrets during the war. The truth about his death curse thanks to the ring Horcrux had taken Minerva the hardest.

It had been thanks to Minerva that Hermione had been lured from her Ministry job into teaching. Minerva seemed to realise that Hermione was not content playing politics. After Hermione finished creating movements to offer freedom to House-Elves who truly wished to be free the opportunity to do, Hermione had taken on other tasks. She had moved on to advocate for more equal rights to the other sentient magical races such as the goblins and centaur. Hermione was quite done with the exhausting work it had taken to advocate for the each of the groups. And she often voiced that she considered teaching like a blissful vacation in comparison.

Thanks to Hermione's work, Hogwarts had the first magically inclined goblins and centaurs added to their rosters. The lack of tolerance and change found before and during the Wizarding Wars finally seemed to force the reality that all of the magical races were important and shunning potential allies by making them seem less than a human was only creating the next Dark Lord or supporters to the next uprising.

The goblins, after spend countless hours with Hermione discussing their needs and desires and having her represent them to the Ministry in even more countless debates, named her the Lady of Silver in honour of their most cherished metal. Hermione became one of the few known witches to become fluent in Goblin Gobbledegook, and Hermione seemed to realise that being privy to their language was perhaps the greatest honour that could be bestow upon not only a human but a witch. It was said that when Hermione visited Gringotts, every Goblin knew her on a first name basis.

The centaur had been a harder group to advocate due to their traditional want for isolation, but thanks to Firenze breaking the ice for her with Magorian, she had many successful talks about philosophy, tradition, and the needs of the centaur race.

Hermione being Hermione, she had gotten to know all of the Dark Forest herd by name, knew all their quirks, and had intimate details of centaur dynamics amongst the herd and with other centaur. Thanks to this, other centaur herds across the U.K., Scotland, and Ireland allowed her to speak with them, and eventually agreed to allow her to advocate for them. By the time she was done parlaying with all the different tribes, she had become one of the rare humans that allowed herself to be marked by each tribe's personal Mark, branding her as welcome amongst each of the tribes a neutral peacemaker.

When all was said and done, the centaur were no longer legally "beasts" nor were they classified as "beings" to be grouped the same as vampires and hags. Hermione's work, while ultimately successful, had drained Hermione's tolerance for politics so thoroughly that she practically jumped into Minerva's arms when the Scottish Headmaster offered her an Apprenticeship and teaching position at Hogwarts.

Hermione had admitted to the elder witch that after her work with the House Elves, goblins, and centaur, the Hogwarts Board of Directors were comparatively tame. Minerva and Severus had shared custody of Hermione as an Apprentice due to some strange Board imperative for new professor flexibility, with Minerva teaching her the ways of Hogwarts and Transfiguration and Severus grooming her to take Slughorn's place so the poor old wizard could actual retire again.

By the time Pomona Sprout had wanted to lure Neville into taking her position, the climate of the Board had changed again, no longer demanding professor flexibility, but Hermione had simply continued dual apprenticing because she had come to enjoy being close to both Minerva and Severus.

Five more years had passed as Hermione learned the other side of Hogwarts life, and by the time she stood on her own two feet as a Mistress of Potions and Transfiguration, everyone on the outside was convinced she wasn't human at all, but rather, an living library incarnate. Others that knew her simply thought she had finally found her true calling.

Now, at the age of thirty-seven, with a reputation built on her own merit rather than the shadow of Harry Potter, Hermione Granger welcomed the life of a professor and found herself teaching her childhood friends' children. Harry had asked her if she ever regretted not settling down and starting a family, but Hermione's somewhat sad expression came with the realisation that some sacrifices had to be made to accomplish what she had in the span of almost two decades. One of those sacrifices had been her relationship with Ron. Now, Hermione was teaching Ron and Lavender's oldest daughter, Rose as well as Draco and Astoria's Scorpius. Neville and Hannah were getting a late start on children, but Hermione knew it was only a matter of time before children would underfoot.

On quiet evenings during tea with Severus and Minerva, Hermione would confess that she couldn't imagine anyone being able to tolerate her in a dating relationship now that she far more set in her ways than ever she was as a younger witch. The once young insufferable and undeniably swotty know-it-all had grown up into a strange combination of Hermione Granger, Minerva McGonagall, and Severus Snape.

Minerva had chuckled as she sat in on one of Hermione's first classes. Taking a page out of Minerva's teaching handbook, Hermione sprawled over her teaching desk as a smug looking sea otter and watched the students file into her class. And taking a page out of Severus' teaching style, she tolerated no stupidity or horseplay in her Potions Laboratory. Yet, despite her strictness, Hermione was well loved as a teacher. While stern and intolerant of rule breaking, she was always highly approachable for help, and Hermione had become known as a professor who liked to have joint classes with other professors when the material overlapped. Many of those classes were taught in joint with Neville's Herbology classes, sometimes she would have Firenze come speak about how the sun and moon cycles affected magic how it could trickle down and affect potion brewing, and on another day she would have Flitwick come in and speak on various charms that were helpful around potion cauldrons.

One of the class favourites was when the elder Madam Pomfrey would come in and speak about healing potions and how they worked as well as how they shouldn't be used. Potion grades on the O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s were uniformly high, and many of those that continued onto N.E.W.T. level potions had a better grasp of potions than those from other schools.

Poppy had commented after the first year of Hermione's joint classes, there had been far less incidents of potion mishaps, overdoses, and accidental addictions and praised her for allowing her to come and speak during her classes. Hermione had simply smiled, stating, "potions are something we have to deal with on a daily basis. We may not make potioneers out of the majority of the students, but we can at least keep them from blowing each other up or poisoning each other on accident."

Oddly enough, even Severus had given Hermione his nod of approval over the changes she was making in the curriculum, though he did pause to jibe her over becoming Hogwart's new greasy Dungeon Otter. Hermione had huffed, spouting that otter fur was naturally oily to waterproof themselves. Severus had given her a rare quirk of both lips— a tiny smile that might as well have been a broad grin.

Severus gave a soft grunt as he peered at the pale flower bud in Hermione's arms, bringing Hermione back to the present. "I do not believe I have ever seen these flowers outside of the centaur inner territories. How did Mr Longbottom manage to acquire it?" He looked towards Firenze with an arched eyebrow.

"Not, I, brother," Firenze said with a shrug. "Neville likes to ask all sorts of questions of me, but did not ask my permission to gather this particular flower. I believe it would be to my best interest not to tell Bane or Magorian that he has been making forays into the woods for digging up one of our sacred plants. It is quite rare for the flower to flourish outside of centaur lands, so, in a way, it is a testament to his care."

"His project to cure his parents?" Severus asked idly.

Hermione nodded. "I told him I would at least do the analysis of the sap since the chances of it blooming for us would be quite unlikely. I do not wish to dissect the flower to get at the pollen, as the properties would most likely change due to the nature of the harvest. Most magical plants are…quirky. Also, I really don't want to be responsible for maiming a sacred plant."

"Wise choice, sister," Firenze chuckled.

Hermione gave a lop-sided grin. "And I don't want our four-legged brother to beat me up!"

Firenze snorted, tail swishing.

Severus eyed the moon flower with curiosity. His dark eyes looking it over. "Firenze, is there a reason the flowers are so seldom seen outside of areas inhabited by centaur? That cannot be a coincidence."

"They have always flourished around our people, brother," Firenze replied. "My dam used to say I was born in a patch of them and that is why my coat was so pale. I believed her for a long time until my coat finally turned gold instead of white."

"How long did that take?"

Firenze grinned. "A few decades."

Severus scoffed.

"About as long as it took the students of Hogwarts to finally believe you were not a giant vampire bat that would burst info flames with the slightest kiss of the sun," Firenze ribbed.

Severus glared at Firenze as Hermione tried to stifle her snicker into her hand. Her hand curved around her face, gentle tipping the flower towards her as she chuckled. Realising she was tilting the poor flower, she dropped her hand quickly, scanning over it to make sure it wasn't damaged.

The moon flower, curved into the gentle slope of a horse's head, whickered at her, depositing a fine layer of bright yellow pollen onto her fingers.

Hermione would have dropped the pot in surprise had Severus not been ready to assist, his hands grasping the falling pot and Hermione's hands together.

The moon flower curved the bell of its head around their joined fingers, whickered, and covered their hands in pollen.

"Severus!" Hermione babbled.

"Collection vial!" Severus muttered.

Together, the pair of them shuffled carefully together to the nearby laboratory table. As they tried to put the potted flower down, they found the moon flower had wrapped it's tendrils around their joined hands, entwining itself around their hands.

"Firenze," Severus snapped. "Is this normal?"

The centaur, who seemed to be locked in a fascinated stare, shook his head to clear it. "What? No, well, I have no idea. I've never had one attach itself to me."

"Glorious," Severus said. "Just our luck."

Hermione tried to untangle herself without damaging the plant, using both physical action and verbal spells, but the moon flower seemed to wrap even tighter around their joined hands. "It's like an octopus!" Hermione squeaked.

"Firenze!"

"Wh.. Yes?" the centaur replied.

"Vial, top drawer," Severus snapped. "Might as well collect some of this pollen and make this embarrassing situation worth it.

Firenze walked over to the laboratory table, inching around Severus and Hermione carefully due to his horse sized bulk. His flank bumped into the nearby table, causing the cauldrons and beakers to rattle, and Severus shot him a disparing look.

"Sorry, brother," Firenze said. "This room wasn't exactly set up for centaur."

Severus glowered as Firenze grabbed clean vial and unstoppered it.

"There is a small measuring spoon here by me. Use it to push the pollen into the vial, if you would please," Hermione said.

Firenze awkwardly lowered the vial down and used the spoon to push the pollen into the glass. The moon flower seemed to be annoyed with Firenze's ministrations and simultaneously wrapped more tendrils around Hermione and Severus's fingers and shook it's flower head at him. Petal lips pulled back to expose inner ridges that looked like horse teeth, and the plant snapped at him, dusting the pair with more pollen. Drool-like sap dribbled down over their fingers.

"Well at least we have a large sample of pollen," Severus sighed as Firenze hurridly pushed more pollen into the vial and avoided the flower's nipping, sap-dribbling teeth.

"Some warning about this would have been nice, Firenze," Severus quipped.

"I swear to you, brother," Firenze said as he carefully placed the vial in the holder on the table. "I have never seen this happen. As a colt, I used to pick them for my dam, and they never once clung to me like creeper vines.

"While we seem to be… incapacitated, Firenze, can you swab some of this sap for us?" Hermione asked. "There is a collection swab here by me."

Firenze paused as he looked around the table and finally reached for the stick with rounded end. Carefully he rolled it around over over their sap and pollen covered fingers, deftly avoiding the irritated moon flower. "Is this enough?" Firenze asked.

"Should be," Severus said, looking at the sticky collection swab. "Just place it in the tube there and cork it."

Firenze carefully did as he was told.

"S..Severus?" Hermione said groggily. "I feel, odd."

Firenze's head snapped around as there was a crash. Hermione slumped into Snape, and he staggered, trying to catch her while his hands were bound. He struggled against the tendrils, no longer trying to preserve the moon flower now that Hermione was collapsing.

"Hermione!" he exclaimed, straining. He sank to the ground with her, toppled over by their unsteady bindings and Hermione's odd dizziness. The tendrils from the moon flower, however, were stronger than goblin silver, or so they seemed.

Severus muttered a chain of spells, but nothing worked to loosen their grip. He felt them writhing against his skin like the movement of a snake. It did not pain him, but it did not release him.

Hermione was shivering against him. Severus used their joined hands to pull her close, using his body to cushion her from slamming against the floor.

"Hermione," Severus grunted as he nestled her under his head, pressing his face into her hair. "Firenze, some help here!"

The centaur struggled to pull both Severus and Hermione up into his arms. He attempted to pull the tendrils from their hands. "Severus, Hermione, can you shift into your Animagus forms?"

Hermione's eyes fluttered closed. Severus grunted. "No, something… something is diverting my magic." The Dark wizard's eyes fluttered and he slumped with Hermione.

Firenze gathered them both into his arms. "Hold on. I think Minerva will forgive me for galloping in the halls this time."

The centaur squeezed through the door, heaved the pair into his arms, and tore down the hallway, praying he didn't get stuck in the stairwell.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-

"How is this even possible?" Minerva stammered as she wrung her hands together. "Firenze?"

The palomino centaur shook his mane. "Believe me, Minerva. I have never seen this happen before. It is the flower that brought civility to the centaur. "If I had believed there was any danger at all, I would have warned them."

Minerva tugged on her robe sleeves as she fretted, pacing.

There was a creak as the main door the hospital ward opened and Neville came in, looking concerned. "You summoned me, Headmistress?" Neville asked, his face lined with worry.

"Neville," McGonagall said sternly. "What plant did you give Hermione to analyse?"

Neville's eyes widened. He looked to Firenze with worry. The centaur nodded at him grimly. "It was a horse moon flower, Headmistress," Neville said. His voice was steeled with his effort not to trip over his words. I… I have been culturing them in the greenhouse to research a cure for my parents."

McGonagall frowned. "As I understand it, these flowers are not usually found outside of centaur lands?"

Neville flushed. "No, ma'am. They are known to flourish only around centaur. The literature and legend described a moon flower that was known to be an exceptional healing flower. It was capable of healing both the mind and body. All I had was description and a drawing, but not a name. When I saw a patch of them when I was walking through the Dark Forest, I had to know. I dug one up and raised it in the greenhouse. I fed it, nurtured it, and simulated the conditions of the area I found it in. It flourished and sent out new rhizomes, but it never bloomed, even in the moonlight. I brought it to Hermione to test the properties." Neville stopped talking, realising he was babbling.

Minerva took in a breath. "Did you… experiment on the flowers in any way, Mr Longbottom?"

Neville gulped. Anytime the Headmistress reverted to Mr Longbottom made him revert to his twelve year old self being talked down to by his Head of House. "I fed it various fertilisers to keep it healthy, but nothing out of the ordinary. I mulched the pots, sprayed them with fresh fish emulsion, simulated the dappled sunlight, and…" Neville stopped talking as Minerva eyed him wearily. "Sorry, no I didn't do anything overly strange." Neville seemed to realise something. "Hermione, is she okay?"

Minerva closed her eyes.

"Merlin's bushy eyebrows!" Poppy's voice came from behind the privacy curtain.

"Poppy? What's going on?" Minerva asked in a half screech, her voice cracking with her emotion.

Poppy stuck her head out from the curtain. "Minerva, I think you need to come look at this."

"Firenze? If you would?" Minerva asked, gesturing to the curtain.

The centaur nodded, leading the way.

-o-o-o-o-o-

As Firenze looked behind the curtain, his breath caught in his throat in wonder.

Before him lay a vast carpet of horse moon flowers. Vines and tendrils, leaves and blooms waved by some invisible wind. A thick coat of pollen was settled over everything in front of him.

Hundreds of the centaur's sacred flowers were blooming over Severus and Hermione's still forms. They were completely covered in a large pile of foliage and blooms. As the witch and wizard breathed, pollen entered their lungs in a visible stream. Trails of sap were running across their exposed skin with a visible silvery blue cast.

Tendrils were moving like the slithering of countless hibernating snakes waking in the spring. Flowers trembled, whickered, and nodded their horse-shaped heads.

"Great Chiron," Firenze whispered reverently. "By the blood of Chronus and Philyra."

The centaur fell to his knees, dropping down to the ground as his human torso slumped in unmistakable bow of reverence. He extended his hands out, not touching, as if to feel the very magic in front of him.

Pollen horses galloped around his outstretched hands, bucking and playing. The flowers rustled, sounding like the gallop of countless hooves moving in unison.

"Poppy," Minerva gasped. "What is this?"

"I was doing my scans on them, and the flowers just started to branch out and replicate until they were almost covered. It happened in a matter of seconds, Minerva. It's like they are sleeping. I do not detect distress, but the flowers… I have never seen such a thing."

As they were speaking, vibrant moonlight cast down upon the bed of blooming moon flowers from the open windows. The flowers whinnied in unison as the pollen horses reared up in unison. A white glow of moonlight reflected off each of the flowers.

One by one, the pollen horses sank burst into particles of pollen and were inhaled by both Severus and Hermione. One by one, each of the flowers sank into the foliage and disappeared. The smaller tendrils slithered and then seemed to sink into the trapped wizard and witch.

The larger vines shuddered and fell away from the pair as a surge of cool lunar magic shimmered outward in a nova of power, blinding all who were unfortunate enough to have their eyes open.

Firenze, who had the forethought to cover his eyes with his arm, was the first to regain his bearings and refocus.

His eyes widened as he saw that Severus and Hermione's hands were still pressed together as though the tendrils had still bound them together, but the vines were gone. Instead, delicate blue and silver shimmered across the skin of their wrists in the form of inked vines. An image of the blooming horse moon flower delicately graced each of the wrists like a tattoo.

Movement caught his attention, and he saw two sets of pointed equine ears poking out of their hair. Satin black ears nestled in Severus' hair, and black tipped, honey-coloured ears poked out from Hermione's bushy hair.

Their teaching robes were scattered every which way, and the remains of both professor's lower garments were cast away as though something had busted out of them. As Firenze's eyes travelled lower, his curiosity far too strong, he gave a soft neigh of surprise. From the torso up, Snape and Hermione looked virtually unchanged, but from the torso down, a drastic transformation had occurred.

Severus' lower body was dark, glossy black horse with shiny obsidian hooves. Hermione's lower body was a deep honey golden brown that tapered into a light gold. Dark black socks adorned her lower legs, and a dark brown stripe went down her back leading to her brown and black tail.

Firenze could only whicker, instinctively giving the almost crooning call that would comfort a herd-mate.

Two sets of tufted ears flicked. Slowly, Severus' and Hermione's eyes opened, blinking ever so slowly as their eyes squinted in the moonlight.

"Merlin's pants!" Neville exclaimed with a cracking voice. His eyes were locked on the lower portion of Hermione's body. "I turned Hermione into a bloody horse!

It was probably good there was no one else in the Hospital Wing that particular evening because everything went straight to Hades after Neville fainted dead a way on the infirmary floor.


	2. Chapter 2 More Legs Than Usual

**A/N** : It was so foggy this morning I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. Literally. I'm surprised I got to clinical without getting creamed by a semi.

 **Alas, my Beta is swamped in real life. All mistakes are my own.**

-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **Chapter 2: More Legs Than Usual**

"I'm going to hex Longbottom so hard into the next century that his children will know their father as flat bottom!" Severus' voice bellowed as he struggled to make his legs work and propel him off the ground. He was, whether it was fortunate or not, tangled up with Hermione's equally equine body.

"Get off me, Ms Granger!" Severus seethed, his black tail whipping back and forth angrily.

"I can't, Severus!" exclaimed Hermione with a wince of pain and her own particular brand of fury. Her ears were pinned back against her head. "You're standing on my… tail!" She shook her mane at him.

Severus' eyes slowly drifted downward to see his hoof planted squarely on Hermione's tail. He began to curse rather loudly, and until that point, none seemed to realise it was possible to swear Avogadro's number.

Severus curled his lips back from his teeth in a half snarl and half sneer, looking so much like his wartime self. He attempted again to untangle himself from Hermione's legs even as she did the same, but neither of them were used to having extra legs or the strange top-heavy feeling of balancing a torso on the front end of a horse.

With a swift kick, a nearby table went flying across the hospital room. A jar and a bowl well zinging over Minerva's head. A bent and mangled bed frame crashed over Neville's prone form.

"Severus!" Poppy protested. "This is an infirmary!"

Fabric tore and dropped to the ground as Severus finally managed to stand to his full height, the remains of his human trousers and footwear lay cast aside on the ground. Severus had been a tall and imposing figure as a fully human wizard, but his added equine lower body made him even more so. Firenze, whom had seemed quite tall before, was now a few hands shorter than Severus.

Severus' dark eyes were smoldering with his anger.

Hermione gave a soft distressed whinny as she freed herself from the remains of her lower garments that clung to her transformed legs. She teetered and stomped, and her rear leg went out and knocked over one of the infirmary bedside tray tables.

She snorted, whirling around as the table crashed to the side, and her rump pressed into the nearby bed, startling her. She half-reared onto her back legs and planted her forelegs on the ground, kicking outward with her back legs with a strong bucking motion.

The bed went careening to the side, which only served to startle her more. She let out a distressed whinny, her ears pinning to the side of her head.

Severus, who had been focused intently on the possible stomping of Neville Longbottom into the floor of the infirmary, seemed to come to his senses, and he whickered at Hermione. He pressed his body against hers, allowing his equine lower body to lean into hers. Simultaneously, Firenze did the same, supporting Hermione between them with soft whickers. Both of the male centaur rubbed the base of her mane, which had torn a path out of her teaching robes and exposed part of her back where her human torso connected to her equine body.

The wild look in Hermione's eyes faded as the feelings of panic subsided. Her sides heaved a little, but she settled. Her ears slowly perked back up, releasing their death grip against her head.

Firenze seemed to realise something significant had happened in both Severus' instinctive comfort of Hermione and her equal comfort in the touch of another centaur's body. "Magorian must be told," Firenze said solemnly. His eyes drifted to where Neville was half-buried under the abused bed frame Severus had kicked over him. "And explanations made."

He looked at McGonagall with a flat press of his lips. "The draw of the herd is a strong thing," Firenze said softly. "The instinct is like gravity. It binds the herd together. What this is… it is real. I feel it— in my bones."

"What are you saying, Firenze?" Minerva asked, rubbing her temples.

Severus let out a long, equine huff, his ears moving slightly back on his head. He stomped his front legs as he absently rubbed Hermione's withers with his hand. "He means there is a very good chance this is not going to be a temporary issue caused by some wayward transfiguration spell."

"Severus?" Minerva replied, her face lined with worry.

Poppy Pomfrey was waving her wand frantically over the three centaur standing in her infirmary. She tutted, trying a chain of different spells. She looked up at Minerva with a sad expression. "He's right, Minerva," Poppy said after a long chain of diagnostic spells. "This… is now their natural form."

"I need air," Hermione said suddenly. She broke free from being between Severus and Firenze, using her new bulk awkwardly as she propelled herself forward. She staggered at first, unsure of her footing and control of her muscles.

Her face was red with emotion as she looked at those present and then bolted out the hospital wing's main doors, the sounds of her hoofbeats ringing against the flagstones.

Firenze and Severus looked immediately distressed as the new female centaur fled the scene, their ears pinned back against their heads simultaneously.

Severus grit his teeth. "What is this… feeling? This… drive?"

Firenze made a fist with his hands as he attempted to wrestle with his emotion and instincts. "To protect the females is… instinctual. Primal. Kin, herdmates, or mates make no difference. She is fully mature and without a mate." Firenze paused and shook his head. "This is awkward."

Severus narrowed his eyes, his rear hoof stomped into the stone floor with a sharp clack.

Firenze met his gaze. "She will attract... suitors," he said after a moment. "Centaurs from my herd and nearby territories will compete for her... favour."

"What!" Severus roared, his voice coming out with a challenging equine scream.

"Peace, brother, please," Firenze placated. "You must realise how unnatural it is for a mature female centaur to not... have a mate at her age. Our people pair off practically as foals emotionally, so the transition during maturity is only a formality. If a female somehow reaches maturity and has no mate, it is the only time males from other colonies and tribes are allowed to present themselves and either join her herd... or the her to his."

"She is not some sort of object to be shown off and paraded like a..."

"It is not done on purpose, brother!" Firenze interrupted. "She is mature and unbonded. Her body will sent out the chemical signals the moment… oh Chiron." The centaur ended with a curse.

"What?" Severus snapped. "What could possible be worse than being forced to—"

Firenze pinned his ears back. "Two other herds are meeting with ours this moon to discuss boundaries, exchange members to strengthen the bloodlines, introduce new herd members, meet up with old relatives, reinforce alliances, and…" He trailed off.

"And," Severus prodded. "And _what_?"

"Establish pair bonds," Firenze said, one ear moving to the side as the other flattened against his head.

"Surely, Hermione will have free will in the matter?" Minerva butted in, protesting.

Firenze stomped his hooves. "Of course she will have a _choice_!" he snorted. She would not be forced! The point is she will have many choices. She… She's a centaur of a completely new bloodline. She's wise, talented, and knows some of our customs better than some centaur do. Any herd this side of ocean would be ecstatic to have her. Psh. If we had ways to cross the ocean without being seen by humans, the unmated males on the other side would be making their way here just in hopes to catch her eye."

Poppy threw up her hands. "What is the fuss about, Firenze?" she asked. "You know I do not know as much about your people's ways. You are the only one that has allowed me close enough to examine you for longer than a few minutes at a time."

Firenze ran his hand through his hair and then down his fur. His nostrils flared as he shifted his weight from hoof to hoof.

"This is… uncomfortable for me," Firenze confessed. He stared upward and then closed his eyes. "I know the two of you are close, Severus. You would much closer if you stopped prancing around each other like foals and snapping turtles." Firenze huffed slowly. "What I'm saying is, brother, if you don't admit what you really want soon, she may have a hundred or more reasons trying to convince her that she doesn't have to doesn't have to wait for you to get your head out from under your tail. All of them will be seeking her out, and they will most likely be stalking the boundaries of Hogwarts just to get a look at her."

Severus managed to turn a dark shade of pink instead of his normal pallor. "I have no intention of courting Ms Granger!" he snapped. "We are colleagues, perhaps friends, but nothing more."

"Brother, please," Firenze said. placing his hand on Severus' shoulder.

The black centaur relaxed a little, perhaps instinctively, and then seemed to realised what he'd done. He stiffened, ripped his shoulder out from under Firenze's touch and ploughed out of the main hospital wing doors. His hoofbeats rang down the hallway slightly unevenly as Severus easy with his new body was apparently lacking.

A low groan came from under the bent bed debris. Neville moaned and pushed himself up into a sitting position, holding his head. "What happened?" he muttered, holding his head where something had given him a sizeable goose egg.

Firenze looked somber. "I think it's time you showed me how many of those flowers you've cultivated, Neville."

"W..ha?" Neville squeaked.

"Do you think this could happen to others? Minerva wondered out loud.

Firenze shook his head with a shrug. "I do not know, Minerva. Before this, I would never thought it possible. Such things are the stuff of legends… myths. They are things one tells foals when they are scared of the storm and need to sleep. Epic stories of transformation and the hands of the gods."

Minerva sighed softly. "We should gather all the facts in the greenhouse. Mr Longbottom, please meet us at the greenhouse after Poppy finishes checking your head."

"Yes, Headmistress," Neville said with a wince, rubbing his head.

Minerva exchanged glances with Poppy and let out a long sigh. She really didn't want to know if things could get worse.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Hermione counted herself fortunate that she didn't run into any of the students as she practically galloped out of Hogwarts and out into the open air. Thankfully, the few students she did see from a distance seemed to think she was just Firenze. There was only one centaur in Hogwarts, for all they knew, and it was rare and far between to see another centaur make an appearance on the grounds.

Hermione's legs were somewhat clumsy, but they were starting to at least move in a more coordinated manner. She tripped a few times, managing to catch herself on walls and nearby fixtures, but ever so slowly, it was becoming easier.

Shock was a word that didn't quite cover her mental status.

Hundreds of conflicting signals were coursing through her mind and body that only began with how to work with extra legs and ended somewhere with "how the hell am I going to explain this to my parents?"

Merlin, Circe, and Hecate… what was she going to tell her parents? How was she even going to get _to_ her parents house? She could, technically, disillusion herself, provided her magic still worked the way it normally did, but, what then? Show up on her parent's doorstep, let herself in, and wait for them to come home and pass out the moment they found out their daughter had been fused to the body of a horse?

She'd put her parents through many stressful situations, _Oblivating_ them being only one offence of many, and she really didn't want to think about how badly it would go when they found out some mishap had turned their nice human daughter into a mythological species. It would almost be better if she showed up as a sea otter. At least then she could disarm them with her adorableness factor and butter them up before exposing herself as a centaur.

Then again, knowing her luck of the past few days, she'd probably end up being taken to the aquarium as a rescue animal with her parents thinking some lunatic had dumped an endangered animal on their doorstep.

Sighing to herself and having it come out as a horse whicker, Hermione decided to test her spellcasting. Might as well get that out of the way first. She decided to start with her Animagus form first, hoping that the transformation into a centaur did not screw up her Animagus form as well. She cleared her mind, focused, and with a soft pop found herself as an otter.

Hermione wiggled her whiskers, feeling far more happy and comfortable as an otter than a centaur. She was, at the very least, used to being in an otter form. She concentrated, silently crafting another spell.

FWOOP!

The nearby rock turned into goblet.

POP!

A leaf turned into a slingback chair.

Well, at least her spells seemed to be working.

Hermione froze as she heard a snap of a twig. Her ears perked as she scanned the edge of the forest. Darkly tanned skin, the low brow, a thick cascade of dark brown mane, and a stunning white blaze told her who was there: Magorian.

"Will you allow me to pick you up, Hermione?" the centaur asked softly.

Hermione squeaked and approached, allowing the centaur's hands to scoop her up and carry her in his arms.

Touch amongst the centaurs, Hermione knew, was as essential as breathing. It was only when humans made assumptions that one could ride a centaur like a horse that caused the almost violent distaste in the Dark Forest Herd. The Dark Forest Herd all knew of Hermione's otter alter-ego, and many of the young colts and fillies enjoyed carrying her around like a prize. Magorian and Bane had questioned whether she felt it disrespected her, but she had made it clear that there was no harm in it.

Part of her enjoyed the antics of the young centaur. They were, in many ways, like the children she had never had herself. They followed her around, begged for attention and treats, and listening to her stories of magic as any human child would be. It was not so uncommon to have herself passed around in her otter form, from one colt or filly to another as the elder centaur told their tales. Since she could not run as fast as they could, they would bundle her up and carry her as they ran, often playing a version of keep away that ended with a pile of exhausted foals and one tuckered out otter Animagus sleeping on top.

Her work advocating with the centaur and goblins had opened many doors within both sets of secretive people, and they seemed willing to allow her into their lives due to the hard work she had put in on their behalf. In direct contrast to the House-Elves, who truly did not want to be "freed," both the centaurs and goblins wanted autonomy and to be treated as equals in the Wizarding world. Hermione's work hadn't gotten everything ironed out, but both the Goblins and the centaur seemed to believe that things were far better now than they had been in hundreds of years. Goblins and centaur could now "legally" carry wands, if they were either enrolled in a school of magic or of age of the species they represented. It was still up in the air what the actual age would be considered adult for either, but for now, the magic that allowed Hogwarts to know when someone was on the list self-adjusted without needing to be tweaked, which made some of the people who had lived in Hogwarts for years wonder if that was the outcome Hogwarts wanted all along.

Magorian stroked the fur across Hermione's back and clucked his tongue against his teeth. "You wish to speak with me, Hermione?" he asked, seeming to be far more in tune with Hermione's thoughts than she was of own.

Hermione squeaked timidly, taking a moment to burrow her nose under Magorian's chin.

The leader of the Dark Forest Herd chuckled softly, his voice a rumble. "There was a time not so long ago, Hermione, when I thought all humans insulted our ways. I was so adamant about preserving our ways and keeping them pure, that did not listen when Firenze tried to tell us all that we cannot remain stagnant and unchanging. The stars burn and fade. The planets move. It was unwise of me to think that the centaur people could remain as we have always been and not adapt to the world that changes around us."

Magorian rubbed her head gently. "Firenze has much wisdom in that he sees further than most. He read the stars clearer so much faster than any of us. Yet, when he tried to warn us of the threat of digging our hooves into the ground while good people died around us, we all turned our back on him. Scared to embrace change. Terrified that if we admitted we were wrong that our society would fall upon itself. It is my hope that I am a far better centaur than I once was and that the blessings and lessons of Chiron have finally made its way into my thick skull."

Hermione chittered at him, rubbing her nose against his chin.

"I sense you are nervous," the centaur leader said kindly. "What troubles you?"

Hermione placed her webbed paws against Magorian's chin, looking into his face for some sort of tell only she knew to look for. After a minute or two of staring into his face, Hermione wriggled free of his arms and flopped onto the ground with a squeak. She shook herself off and made a soft huffing noise. She looked up at Magorian again.

Magorian tilted his head, but waited patiently.

Hermione bounced through the tall grass, making the tops of the grass wave back and forth wildly as her otter body disappeared into it. The grass stilled and for a moment, Magorian seemed to stand alone and abandoned.

Then, as a soft breeze caused Magorian to flare his nostrils and perk his ears forward in confusion, Hermione rose out of the grass— first by her head, followed by her torso, and then rising up fully onto her four equine legs.

"Great Chiron," Magorian uttered, his body going completely and utterly still. His eyes flicked to the delicate vine patterns on her wrists and arms and the moonflower that emblazoned the inner skin of her wrists.

He reached out his hand to her, inviting her to touch him and confirm what he was seeing was real.

Hermione took a hesitant step forward, her hand ever so lightly pressed into his waiting palms.

"The blood of Chiron has blessed you with a body to match your heart," Magorian whispered with wonder. "Never in my wildest visions did I believe I would see such a miracle in my time."

Hermione fidgeted under his inspection, but his touch was comforting, far more so than it ever had been before. He rubbed the base of her mane in a soothing gesture.

"Do you feel the pull of the herd, Hermione? Can you hear the nickers of the herd calling to you?" Magorian asked, his eyes intent on hers.

Hermione nodded slowly. "I think so, I— I hear so many things." Her ears swiveled in response.

Magorian seemed to appraise her, his hands soothed her with small touches as he looked over her legs, tail, back, and mane. "Amazing," he crooned. "Perfect in every way. You even smell of the herd. I smell Firenze upon you and… Hermione, is Severus—?" His nostrils flared and his eyebrows lifted. He snorted in surprise.

Hermione shied instinctively, unsure of Magorian's response to finding out two centaurs had been made in the course of a day.

Magorian, however, looked happy. He clasped her hands in his and stared into her face with jubilance. "You have no idea what this will mean to our herd, Hermione. To have a foal is one of our greatest celebrations. To have a new herd member join ours from a neighboring tribe is a grand occasion, but to gain one of the blessed of Chiron. It is the most fortuitous blessing to our people. It is the stuff of legend."

"You're not… angry?" Hermione asked, her ears flattened to the side.

Magorian gave her a look of disbelief. "Hermione," he said, taking her hands and flipping them over to expose her wrists. "Chiron's blood has marked you kin." He traced the flower markings on her skin and they tingled, making Hermione blinked in surprise. "None will question Chiron's Mark, Hermione," he replied with a gentle stroke of his fingers over hers.

Magorian gave her a mischievous grin. "Do you wish me to prove it?"

Hermione looked nervous.

"Come," he said, gesturing with his chin. "Walk with me."

Whether by newly found instinct or by trust built on many years, Hermione followed beside the elder centaur, falling into an easy walk.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-

When Firenze had tried to convince Severus to make the trip to meet and greet with "his people," discomfort and awkwardness was only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. He was used to social awkwardness. He was used to discomfort, but suddenly being a new species had never even been on the radar.

Truth be told, being an Animagus had made him quite used to be another species, but there was always the fact he returned to the shape he had been born in that allowed a sort of clinical detachment. He didn't really indulge in his Animagus form often thanks to how utterly ludicrous it was to be a bloody panther roaming around Hogwarts… or anywhere for that matter. Short of being in the jungles of Vietnam or some tropical location, black panthers were not exactly standard U.K. fauna. They also tended to scare the dickens out of typical people. Large black predatory cats weren't exactly Minerva in her tabby cat form.

Hermione had always taken his panther form in stride. She and Minerva had been the only ones that knew short of the Animagus Registry, and that, thankfully, was far more protected after the war. Rita Skeeter couldn't just waltz to the Registry and start blackmailing people over their forms. It was ironic, considering Rita herself was an illegal Animagus.

Hermione had found out by accident the same day he had found out she was an otter Animagus. Minerva had known, of course, considering she had taught them both, and had found their accidental meeting on the shore of the Black Lake amusing. Minerva wore cat suave like the Malfoy's wore arrogance and entitlement. They made a bizarre trio of Animagi. One oily black panther padded silently on the shore next to a bouncing, squeaky otter only to be joined by one smug looking silver tabby cat. It had become a daily morning ritual, their walks along the shore had mended something between Severus and Minerva and had forged a friendship that would have been impossible between the three during the war.

Minerva had taken Severus under wing in secret back when he was a younger student after the incident with Remus. Her reasoning was, if he could master the Animagus transformation, he would be be able to be safe from such situations in the future. That had been the start of the real respect he had for Minerva, and she had been fond of him until the point where Dumbledore framed him for his murder.

It had taken years after the conclusion of the war for Minerva to come to terms with the true face of Albus Dumbledore and the fact the old Headmaster hadn't trusted her enough to tell her the truth, and that was something she had to do before she could heal in other places. Severus, on the other hand, had a mountain of baggage to deal with after the war— the kind of baggage that could only take time to resolve… time, non-judgemental friendship, and a boatload of tolerance. Minerva and Severus had settled into a more at ease friendship within their roles as colleagues. He and Hermione, however, had formed something he never thought he'd find: faith.

Hers was a face he saw every day, and unlike so many others, she held a warmth he looked forward to seeing. She did not judge him. She had listened to him as his apprentice with the apt attention, and the years working at the Ministry and as a survivor or the war had molded the once naive and swotty know-it-all into a strong witch that was more than capable of keeping both her students and him on his toes. He found that he couldn't imagine life at Hogwarts without her in it, yet at the same time, he denied that it was anything more than friendship.

But this new situation was something unlike anything Severus had been thrown into before. He'd been hexed into running around with a pair of asses ears thanks to James Potter. He'd had his shoes glued to the floor, his tongue glued to the roof of his mouth, his teenage self almost mauled by a werewolf, his neck savaged by a homicidal overgrown python, and his spine bowed from countless Cruciatus, but he'd never been completely transfigured into another species to this magnitude. He had never felt such a drive to protect another so strongly that he wanted to drive away anyone who even looked at Hermione in anything other than a smile.

No one, not even Lily had inspired such an overwhelming compulsion to storm to her side and press his body against her in some primal need to insure both her safety and reassure himself that she was safe.

Severus slapped himself on the forehead, letting his palm slide down his face. His tail swished wildly.

 _She's just a friend,_ he admonished himself. _You have no right at all to force your overbearing protection over a friend or a colleague just because some new centaur instincts tell you to._

 _She could be more than just a friend,_ the little voice in his head prodded him from within.

 _No!_

Severus reared up on his rear legs and kicked his forelegs out, knocking over a table in his now cramped quarters. He gave an equine groan and proceeded to trash his chambers as only four hooves paired with human arms could do.

As a litter of books lay scattered around the floor of his chambers, Severus collapsed on the floor, his four equine legs collapsing under him. He slumped against his bed. The bed creaked from his increased mass and weight, and Severus became, increasingly aware that his old sleeping arrangements were going to have to change as well.

Firenze's suggestion that he fess up to his feelings towards Hermione had hit a nerve. He had been used to their rapport. He had been comfortable with their typical banter, but every time the staff had brought up the possibility that the pair of them might be in a relationship beyond that of colleagues or friends, he had most violently dismissed it. He had always been very careful to push her away, deny any possibility of interest, and ensure the witch never doubted that it was all they could ever be. He let people think it was because he was still getting over Lily. He let them think it was because he was too broken or damaged to see any light at the end of a tunnel.

A part of him had admonished himself in the mindset that if he let himself let go of that part of himself that held Lily as the inspiration for his Patronus that he would be betraying her all over again. Another part of him knew that the Lily that had been his friend before their most painful parting of ways had moved on. That same witch would have expected him to do so as well. It was he that couldn't let go because it was far too easy to think he would never deserve better.

Death Eater.

Betrayer.

Foul tempered git.

Son of a drunken wife-beater.

He stared at his forearm where the Dark Mark had always marred his skin— proof of his vile past. He had sworn to himself every time his mind had entertained the thought of asking Granger out for coffee or a trip to some foreign library that as long as that reminder of past remained, he would remain alone.

It had always been proof that he could never escape the choices he had made as a bitter, desperate boy.

His eyes stared blankly at his skin. Vines curled around his arms, tapering into the delicate petals of a flower. The pigment moved under the surface of his skin with tinges of green and silvery-blue.

Severus hissed in sudden pain as a sharp burning sensation as familiar as the stab of guilt he felt when he heard the word "Mudblood" jolted up his arm.

The Dark Mark.

The faded but black ink that taunted his every waking moment darkened and burned.

Severus grit his teeth, his hand clenching his branded arm in pain.

The Dark Lord was dead. The Mark shouldn't burn!

But, burn it did. It grew hotter, and Severus cried out. He clasped his hand over his arm, feeling the grotesque writhing under his skin. He could feel the hard contours of a skull and the dense movement of the serpent. His gripping hand was wet, and Severus stared down at his hand, expecting blood.

Impossibly dark liquid, darker than any ink he'd ever seen, oozed out from between his fingers. His arm convulsed under his hand, and he clasped it harder, crying out as it spasmed against his control. It was worse than when the Dark Lord became annoyed at his minion's promptness. It was like acid crawling up his arm one centimeter at a time.

He panted, seethed, and moaned, feeling as though he was being ripped apart. He fully expected to see his arm laid bare with his skin pulled away from his muscles and his muscles pulled away from the bone. Vile black liquid oozed out from his arm, smelling of rot, and he was instantly reminded of all the reasons he believed himself undeserving of forgiveness.

Good people didn't have this kind of evil living in their arm, merging with their lifeforce.

Severus whimpered, unable to fight the waves of pain. It was worse than when it was burned into his skin for the first time. Voldemort had been oh so seductive with the Marks when he had first "blessed" his chosen. He had made his people feel as though they mattered. He had made them believe they were special. He had made the Mark pleasureable. It was only later when all the Death Eaters realised that their Lord far more preferred to channel pain, but by the time many of them realised their mistake, it had been far, far, too late.

Severus leaned against the mattress of his bed, wheezing in the pain. His arm hung limply, and his covering hand, covered in foul-smelling, black goo, made him want to hurl. He stared, half-delirious, at his arm.

He expected to see the dark serpent writhing out of its skull.

Death Eater.

The badge of his unforgivable shame.

It was the brand of his sins, his failures, and his need to be better than his adversaries.

There on his arm was a silvery-blue moon flower, open so wide that its inked pollen glittered on its swollen anthers. The black mark of shame was gone, trails of black where the Mark had been forced out of his pores trailed down his skin and dripped to the floor in a steaming puddle of black nastiness.

He stared, his mouth working but no sound coming out.

The moon flower bobbed and swayed on his arm as tendrils curled around his arm like serpent. Shiny, lifelike leaves adorned a ring around his lower arm, wrapping around his elbow and upwards to his shoulder.

Severus let out a choking sob, the accumulation of shame and self-loathing spilling forth in response to disappearance of the Mark that had been with him for decades.

He had not forgiven himself since the day he had spitefully hurt his childhood friend. He had not dared to believe that any amount of atonement would make things right for the atrocities he had committed during the wars regardless of what "side" he had been on, but forgiveness had come to him anyway.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **A/N:** Personally, I think it's going to take Severus time to admit any sort relationship his possible besides what he strove so hard to maintain at arms length. Despite what HE thinks, he is still broken inside, but, perhaps, now he can move on and crawl out of the box he's trapped himself in. Perhaps now, he can heal. Maybe he cane even do it before another centaur sweeps Hermione off her feet... er... hooves.

I'm still debating on whether Hermione should have a scene trying to contact her parents. It could be comical or... horrible.

If any of you have a bug buzzing in your ear on a scene you'd like to see regarding our newly centaur friends, let me know. I can't promise, but you never know! I am available on here, of course, but you can also contact me on my tumblr vis username corvusdraconis.

 **Enjoy your Labour Day Weekend, U.S. Folks!**


	3. Like a Boulder Rolling Downhill

**A/N:** Ugh… back to studying with me.

Beta Love: fluffpanda (sadly she's swamped this week, so all mistakes are my own until she gets back to it!)

 **Thanks to:** hwyla for catching that stuff

-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **Chapter 3: Like a Boulder Rolling Downhill**

When Severus made his way into the Forbidden Forest with Firenze, he wasn't sure what to expect. He felt like a boy of seven, hanging onto his mother's skirt as she dragged him through the grocery store as a child, only his mother was replaced by a palomino centaur, and that centaur was most definitely not wearing a skirt.

It wasn't as though he had never been in the forest before, nor was it the first time he'd ever met centaur, but he wasn't feeling like someone his age told him he should be. He wasn't even sure what a centaur his age would be considered. Asking Firenze how old he really was was only met with a smug smile and a reply, "old than you, brother, by many, many years."

How long was centaur childhood?

As they reached the more secluded and protected area, Severus saw the distinctive silvery-blue petals of the moon flower buds swaying in the breeze. The flowers nickered as they passed, and the wind made the leaves rustle like the pounding of countless small hooves.

"They normally bloom towards late afternoon and night," Firenze said, perhaps following Severus' curious thoughts. "It is rare to see them active during the day."

Severus stared at the flowers thoughtfully.

Firenze nickered softly, pressing his flank to Severus' with a gentle pressure. Severus found himself leaning into it automatically. "Come, brother. Isn't it time you let yourself believe you are meant for more than a lonely existence?"

Severus furrowed his brows, his pale skin seemingly more pale against the shiny black of his mane and fur.

Firenze touched the base of his mane, rubbing it in comfort. "Humans speak of compassion and love for their fellow man, but is far more rare to see it, even in families, the way the centaur see it every day. Once, our people were like you. Worse perhaps. Carnal. Rude. Uncouth.

"We made ourselves drunk, did horrible things, and we held ourselves accountable to none of it. We were the sons of Ixion who lusted after the god-king's wife, Hera while he was a guest at Zeus' table. He failed to control his urges, and he thought he was loving a goddess, but it was not Hera he was joined with. It was Nephele, the cloud nymph, and from her, the first of our people were born. We were the product of lust uncontrolled and my people were no were different. The first of the centaurs were not something to be proud of. We took after our father, shunning our mother's grace in favour of food, wine, and our loins.

"We were hated and feared, for we were born both of man and nymph," Firenze continued, "but Chiron was born of Cronus and Philyra. He was born of a Titan and an Oceanid, one of three thousand some daughters of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys. Unlike the first centaurs, he was immortal and his wisdom and kindness renowned.

"He tried to teach us civility," Firenze explained. "He tried to teach us medicine and prophecy. He tried to bring us honour to our hunts, and precision to our archery so that we left no animal to suffer to feed us, but many us were too wild with the blood of our father. We could not fathom any life but the ones we had.

"When Heracles accidently wounded Chiron with an arrow poisoned by the Hydra's blood, he was doomed to live forever in agony. The gods took pity upon him, and allowed him to die, casting his body to the stars where he watches over us eternal," Firenze said looking upward. "But, before he left the physical world, his blood spilt upon the ground, and from it, sprung the moon flowers. Their sap is the blood of Chiron. Their pollen, when inhaled by my people so long ago, finally brought sanity, wisdom, and civility to a people who had never known it."

Firenze looked thoughtful. "It is said that without Chiron's sacrifice, our people would never have survived, for once, so very long ago, the centaur were only male. Anatolius, one of the first who became civilised, fell in love with human woman named Galene. He courted her, wooed her with poems and talk of the stars, and she did love him as he did her. He longed for her as bulbs under the earth long for spring."

"Humans, her people, her family, and her friends, shunned her for her love. They stoned her, leaving for dead on the edge of their village," Firenze continued. "Anatolius found her, cradled her half-dead body to his, and fled into the forests of his people. He lay her in a bed of moon flowers and wept. It is said, as the moon rose, the flowers bloomed, and the pollen horses danced over her body. Chiron's blood joined with hers. She rose as the first female centaur and became Anatolious' mate. She was the first but not the last. Others joined her, joining our people and making making us stronger.

"That is why we are so driven to protect our females, brother," Firenze said calmly. "They are our future. They are a reminder of a most great sacrifice and love. Most of the centaur of today descend from those ancient lines, but it is the story of the flower that remains strong in our lore. It is why we value them so highly. It is why they are sacred."

Firenze put his hand on Severus' shoulder. "Brother, Chiron has looked down upon you and given you his blessing. You may not believe so right now, but I beg you to give it a chance and see it as the gift it is. It is not just a gift to you, Severus. It is a gift to our people. Our people have our faults, just as any do. We can fight, bicker, and be capable of horrible bias, but we can learn from our mistakes and treasure what we have been given just as much if not more."

Severus relaxed a little to Firenze's touch and nodded silently.

"Thank you, Severus," Firenze said with a smile.

A squeal and chain of happy nickering broke the moment, and a small miniature herd of young colts and fillies stampeded by them. The fillies were tossing garlands of flowers over the colts, and the colts were running as fast as their legs could carry them. The colts carried what looked like bug nets in their hands. Severus had to smile a little that kids would be kids, regardless of species.

Severus saw a group of centaur gathered around the main camp, gesturing and laughing as they exchanged stories. Centaurs he had never seen before walked around with others from the Dark Forest Herd. More foals than usual were gathered in the middle, weaving in and out of their dam's legs as they played with each other but too shy to explore like the older colts and fillies.

Many looked up to see him. Those that he didn't know simply nodded respectfully, but those that knew him as a Hogwarts professor, looked at him with wonder. They approached silently, extending their hands to touch his flanks and back. Many of them whickered and blew soft puffs of air as they gently pet his fur, partly in comfort and partly to confirm that his new body was not an illusion or trick of human magic.

Normally, Severus would have felt uncomfortable under the scrutiny, but each touch was done so reverently that he had no attack of discomfiture. Many of them touched his arms, tracing the ivy-line vines that traced up his arms. The younger were more curious than reverent, blatantly touching the moon flowers with wide eyes. The older asked first, but still traced the petals with gentle traces of their hands.

There was an odd sense of belonging in their touches. Their soft whickers put him at ease in a way self medication and personal meditation could not. It felt natural, but unfamiliar. He admitted that his refound friendship with Minerva and the companionship he had been blessed with thanks to Hermione had made things much better for him, mentally, but the genuine warmth of the herd was a distinct contrast to his past. He no longer held himself blameless in the war of attrition that had been his childhood Hogwarts career, but he had often wondered if things had been different, maybe he might have learned to be someone that didn't inspire curses and accusations of being a greasy-haired dungeon bat git from the student body.

Maybe. The world was filled with a hundred what-ifs, and Severus had no illusions that his past could be easily fixed with wave of a wand and the correct incantation.

 _What about the chance encounter with a magical flower?_ The little voice in the back of his head buzzed and he shook his head as if to avoid the noise of a fly.

As the touching and greeting simmered down with Firenze looking on with a warm but smug smile, Severus saw a group of young centaur gathered around. They were giving someone their rapt attention, their ears were perked forward, and their tails were swishing back and forth in excitement. The adults were looking on with some amusement, but neither the Dark Forest Herd nor the visitors seemed overly concerned to what was drawing their foals, fillies, and colts.

As he approached, he recognised Hermione's familiar upper body rising from around the crowd of smaller younglings. Each of the young centaur were carefully weaving a blanket of clover flowers across her back with their hands. The older colts and fillies were showing the foals how to weave the stems together in braids. Light pink, purple, whites, and heliotrope flowers wove together across her back and curled around her equine shoulders and across her breast, giving her the look of wearing a cape.

Sunlight trickled down from the forest canopy, giving Hermione's honey-coloured dun coat a dappled appearance, and now that the sun was on her, he could see the distinctive dark brown stripe down her back with barbs going down the length. It looked as though an ancient chinese ink painting brush had drifted across her back, where the "ink" bled out into her honey-coloured coat. The darkened tips of her ears flicked as she spoke with the younglings, showing far more ease with her condition than he did of himself. Her legs eased in a darker brown and almost black gradation with just the hint of darker stripes near her knees and over her hocks.

She was in teaching mode, he could tell. He'd seen it so many times before. Her eyes held that sort of infinite patience he had always admired. From the very beginning, she had always been a compassionate teacher, far more tolerant of youth and the shenanigans it brought. Severus blamed it on her childhood growing up with Potter and Weasley. Despite her compassion, she took a no-nonsense approach to her teaching. Much like Minerva, Hermione commanded respect without destroying the inherent enthusiasm of youth. Most of the students loved her, and while they did not deny her classes were difficult and challenging, it was rare for the typical student to hate her class. There were always exceptions, of course. Sometimes she ended up with the current generation's version of James Potter and his gang of Marauders. However, where James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter had gotten away with practically murder under Dumbledore's watch, little escaped Hermione's notice. She knew all the hiding places, remembered all the tricks, and, perhaps most importantly, had the complete support of Headmistress McGonagall when it came to punishing troublemakers whose pranks moved from humorous and harmless into dangerous or cruel.

It was amazing how much more was caught and dealt with thanks to McGonagall's trust in her staff. While many of the elder staff had a certain soft spot for Albus Dumbledore, they admitted that Minerva was far more fair. The staff meetings were always a round table, and information was shared freely rather than horded like a dragon's treasure. The Board of Directors had found themselves almost obsolete thanks to Minerva's skill, and many folk had stated that they looked forward to another half a century under her wise and impartial leadership.

As Severus found himself admiring Hermione's attractive coat and markings, a hand touched the base of his mane and startled him.

"She looks natural there, doesn't she?" Magorian said with a warm expression. "She teaches the young and forgets all awkwardness.

Severus blinked and nodded. "She seems to be dealing better than I," Severus said, confessing his awkwardness.

"Nearly two decades she spent amongst us, Severus," Magorian said. "She knows our ways perhaps better than we do, for she absorbed the stories and tales of more than just one herd. She has left her mark upon many herds and they upon her. All of it long before this most current change of situation."

"She always was a sponge for knowledge," Severus said thoughtfully.

"You too, hunger for knowledge, Severus," Magorian said knowingly. "You simply do not dive in forelegs first up to you neck with grand enthusiasm."

Severus snorted.

Magorian laughed. "The foals have always adored her, her teachings, and her stories, only now, they can love upon her properly now that her body matches her heart."

Severus frowned. "Do you… truly believe that?"

Magorian looked at Severus with a slight sadness. "Do you not?"

Severus looked down at his front hooves.

"I must confess to some… doubt," Severus admitted. He watched as the foals were wrapping Hermione's legs with leather wraps and shell and hulls strung together. They made a soft tinkling sound as they clanked together when Hermione stomped her hooves.

"By the time she tries to return to Hogwarts, I fear our younglings will have her decked out in pure centaur fashion," Magorian said with a twitch of his lips. "And what they do not finish, the females of the herds will be more than happy to assist her with the rest."

Already, Severus found his eyes wandering. The centaur were not ashamed of their bodies, and human clothing was hardly practical. They wore more minimal dress to blend into their woodland home. The centaur female was not the modest sort, as comfortable without clothing as the full horse that roamed the wilds. For diplomacy's sake, they minimal cover-ups, but that was more for the human's benefit than a sense of modest self-image.

Hermione's bare back was now exposed, her curly, bushy human hair merged into the longer and straighter strands of mane that tapered down to the stripe that ran along her back. Her bare shoulders hung in a gentle curve as she moved her hands over each of the foals, colts, and fillies. She brushed them with bristle brush as they fussed over her. Each of the young centaurs bumped into each other to get the honour of her brushings, giggling and laughing as she tried to give each of them their equal amount of time.

Her smile was radiant, and Severus realised how much it pleased him to see it on her face. The older centaur had had taken the remains of her teaching robes and cut them in a manner that did not restrict her movement and allow her thick mane to flow freely, yet they were still respectful of Hermione's human modesty. Her arms were bare, save for ornately tooled leather bracers and an armband on each of her upper arms, trimmed in feathers, metal cones, and beads. The vines and flower designs trailed up her arms and seemed as though they belonged there.

The young centaur seemed to have no such qualms about relieving the once-human witch of the remains of her modesty by sneakily gifting her centaur jewelry and clothing to replace most of her human clothing.

Severus snorted to himself as he realised that for each piece of clothing Hermione tried to hold onto, the younger centaurs were replacing it leather and fiber centaur-made accoutrement. Now, Hermione had a leather and fiber halter top to replace her normal tunic and belt. She could, if she wanted, be seen in Wizarding public without causing too much of a fracas, but he had a feeling that those that knew her would do a lot of double taking. She was beautiful and elegant.

"If one of us tried to get her out of her human clothes, she would have been completely embarrassed," Firenze nickered a chuckle. "Leave it to the young to lure her out of her human modesty."

Severus' lips twitched.

A buckskin centaur was walking towards Hermione, shooing the small herd of younglings away from her sides. Some of them dove under her body and hid between her legs like they were her foals, and Hermione laughed as he chased them around with a laugh.

"I am Zoticus of the Loch Lomond Herd, Hermione," Severus heard the other centaur say with a bow of his human torso in combination with his front legs. "Might I rescue you from the foals for a time?"

Hermione laughed warmly and bowed her head to him, dipping her front legs in front of her in the bow she mirrored off of other centaur. "Good afternoon, Zoticus," she greeted. "Have you had your fill of telling great tales with the others?"

Zoticus chuckled. "We are centaurs, Hermione. Our people never tire of great tales. It is in our blood."

Hermione gave him a smile.

"The others tell me that you now teach at Hogwarts," Zoticus said. "The first school of magic to accept both the centaur and the goblin nation's children as students under its roof."

Hermione nodded. "I was once a student there. It seems I cannot escape."

"I remember when you visited our herd years ago," Zoticus said. "You were the first our elders allowed within our borders. You were the first to speak for us and what we desired for our people. There are few who would forget that."

Hermione shook her head. "I am just glad it worked out. The Ministry can be fickle and the temperature can shift like the weather at sea."

Zoticus seemed thoughtful. "There is something I would ask of you Hermione," Zoticus said with a lowering of his head, "if you would humour me."

"You wish me to dive into the surf and check your crab traps?" Hermione jested.

Zoticus sputtered. "Maybe later, but, I would ask you to run with me. Perhaps, you could show me some of the landmarks here."

Hermione eyed the buckskin centaur with curiosity.

He stared back at her, his head curved down as his feet stomped nervously in the forest litter.

"Won't your herd miss you?" Hermione asked, casting a glance to where a group of the foreign centaur were talking together, occasionally lifting their head to stare in their direction with amusement.

"They can live without me for a time," he said cheerfully.

Hermione shook her head. "Very well, I would be glad to show you around, but I think you could pick someone else who would be a far better guide than I."

Zoticus snorted, his hooves dancing on the ground. "I would prefer your company," he said brazenly, "if it pleases you."

Hermione huffed a short puff of air and laughed. "As you wish."

As Hermione and Zoticus walked beside each other on the trail leading out of the encampment, Severus felt a twinge of something in his gut. He told himself that it was nothing and he had no right to object. He had been the one that had repeatedly told her that there would be nothing between them, after all. He was used to being alone.

Why was it, then, that it felt like he was losing Lily all over again?

-o-o-o-o-o-o-

The run with Zoticus had been exhilarating, and Hermione found she enjoyed the feeling of the wind across her back and the stretch of her legs as they reached across the ground.

Zoticus had been attentive and intelligent as well as curious as to the human world. There were few opportunities for centaur to travel the human lands, even in the Wizarding world due to their very obvious bodies. The chances of being seen by Muggles was a risk few wanted to take, and the centaur were not accustomed to disillusionment spells as much as they were used to camouflage in the forests. There was far more than two worlds out there— more than just Muggles and Wizarding folk. The Goblin Nation was culture unto itself. The centaur were no different.

Zoticus reminded Hermione of Viktor. He was strong and athletic, but also observant and intelligent under his physical prowess. He was also considerate in a way Ron could have taken lessons from back when they were going to school together.

Idly, she wondered what Viktor would think of her now after her most recent… change. Hell, she wondered what she thought of herself after her most recent change. She slapped her palm into her face.

What had happened? How had things gone so pear shaped?

She wanted to lay down in her comfy bed and sprawl. She couldn't fit in her comfy bed and sprawl. She'd probably break it with her weight, and there was the issue that she doubted it would be comfortable for her lower half. What was she going to do about teaching? Oh, sure, she could walk right in like nothing was going on. Dumbledore was always good about making big things appear like nothing. It wasn't quite Minerva's style, however. Mind you, this was Hogwarts. All secrets were known by everyone within a matter of hours.

That meant Rose probably knew, and it was only a matter of time before Harry and Ron came barging over the hill, wands raised, and knickers in a twist.

 **Creepy Dark Wizard Ensorcels Co-Professor with Primitive Centaur Magic**

That sounded about right for the students of Hogwarts.

Hermione wondered if Rita Skeeter would be in on it.

 **Post-War "Heroine" Floosey Seduces Ex-Death Eater with Exotic Plant!**

Hermione knew that would be more Rita's style. She had never forgiven Hermione for forcing her to write the truth for once in her life. Hermione wasn't even sure if Rita was capable of writing the truth without going into painful convulsions due to sensationalism withdrawal. Somehow, Neville wouldn't even be mentioned, being considered too dull to write about. The plant wouldn't be treated as the sacred plant of the centaur, no. It would be be made into some tampered tool by Hermione's "love sick" delusions.

Hermione shook her head with a half whinny. Part of her wanted to stomp Rita under all four of her new legs. Thing is, she wasn't sure if her once-human self would have been so far behind in that mental process. The woman was like that nasty smelling goo that got stuck on the frog of her hooves.

Hermione paused. Great, now she was actually making comparisons with her centaur anatomy like it was normal. What was normal, anymore? Had anything really been normal since she turned eleven and received that letter from Hogwarts? She was pretty sure she signed away her life to "random acts of magical chaos" when she walked through the front gates.

Hermione sighed. She was going to have to talk to Minerva soon, probably with Severus to save her the trouble of drama twice. Minerva really didn't deserve getting stuck in between all the things she ended up wedge between. There were just too many rocks and hard places. Hogwarts was a castle, after all. Every wall was a hard place.

"Hermione," Severus' voice whickered softly from the shade of the trees, his voice blending with the subtle timbre of his equine voice. He stood there, silently, as he tended to do when he was watching over her. It was something he never stopped doing after her apprenticeship. His voice held the note of both curiosity and concern. There was a reverberation of something else, but Hermione couldn't quite place it.

Hermione turned, flicking one of her back legs as it got caught on a bramble. She stomped and turned around. "Severus," she replied with relief. Despite his new appearance, he was still the most familiar sight she could see, and she felt a surge of warmth upon seeing him.

There was a soft pull towards him, and she trotted over to him in greeting, softly nickering. She sidled up against him, gently leaning into him, and he gave a soft croon, his hands reaching out to touch her arms where the moon flowers and leaves circled her skin.

His face pressed into her hair as he uttered a low nicker. His breath tickled her neck, and she felt far better about her situation. At least she wasn't alone in her trial. It wasn't that she believed herself friendless, or that the centaur's friendliness would wear off, but he had been thrust into the same situation. They had that in common.

A rising instinct told her that it was safe beside him—with him. He was older and more experienced. He was healthy, had four good legs, a fine stature, and a sleek mane and tail...

He seemed to have the same realisation, as his arms slowly enfolded her human torso to his, a sharp intake of breath and a shudder of his body signalling that the drawing was more than just her. The rough texture of his hands brushed against her cheek as he his black eyes moved over her face.

For years they had been dancing around each other. Hermione would attempt to advance, and Severus would shy away from her, pushing her away with dismissive excuses: age, their apprenticeship, his being an ex-Death Eater, age again, and a hundred other "perfectly logical" reasons that had nothing to do with attraction and everything to do with denial.

Harry had long since explained that Snape's past with his mother had left deep wounds that had only started to heal when Harry arrived at Hogwarts and blasted them open and rubbed salt into them. Harry was the spitting image of his father, save the eyes, and in Harry, Severus saw two things that brought him nothing but pain. Now, almost two decades after the fall of Voldemort for the final time, the two could at least speak with each other without getting up in each other's grill, but it had taken years of mediation between the two of them and Hermione in the middle.

"My father was a git, Hermione," Harry had said in explanation. "As a child, I couldn't bear the thought that my parents had flaws. No one wants to believe their parents are capable of such things. Eventually, my dad must have grown out of it. My mother married him, after all. They both… died for me, but they were never allowed closure, Hermione. Just like me, he can only guess what could have happened, had they lived."

"He's not a nice man," Harry had laughed. "Even you have to admit he was a righteous jerk to us, regardless of any underlying reason, but, I understand that you see more to him than most. My mother, she really cared for him once. Surely, after all he's done to protect us, I should at least speak to him without wanting to hex his bits off?"

Hermione had laughed. "You've come a long way, Harry."

The messy-haired wizard had laughed with her. "Just don't tell Ron that we talked," Harry said warily. "He still hasn't forgiven me for going out to tea with Malfoy. I can only imagine what he'd think if he found out I was okay with you apprenticing under Snape and that I actually was okay with you being… friends."

Hermione had arched a brow. "Finally on speaking terms with Draco?"

Harry had snorted. "We work together now. It would be kind of stupid to let an old history get someone killed in the field because we're too busy hating each other for things we can't even remember the real reason for, wouldn't it?"

"I suppose that would be like me grudging Lavender for having a happy life with Ronald," Hermione had answered. "Even if she does make me want to hurl every time she calls him Won-won."

Harry had shuddered. "You and me both, Hermione." He had twisted his face into something akin to pain. "I get to see them during family gatherings."

Hermione had winced in sympathy. "My condolences."

The thought of Draco made Hermione fidget. Part of her irrationally thought that if he called her Mudblood back then, what the hell would he call her now? The rational part of her mind told her that Draco had changed and grown up just as much as the rest of them did. Hell, Severus, Draco, and she had tea every week and had become quite at ease with each other. She had babysat Scorpius for years. Hermione burrowed her face into into his chest and closed her eyes.

As Hermione's nostrils flared and she caught the scent of Severus mixed in with the heavy musk of of something distinctively equine. Overlayed on it were the hints of his favourite tea, the smell of parchment, and the various potion ingredients he never stopped working with, even after she had taken the mantle of Potion Mistress.

Her fingers brushed against Severus' skin, tracing the moon flowers that had grown up his arm. As she touched the area where his Dark Mark once sat, he gave a sharp intake of breath and a low moan. His breath tickled her neck, and his body was warm against hers. His lips brushed against the skin of her cheek and dragged toward her mouth as his breath tickled her moistened lips. Ever so gently, his lips touched hers.

Slowly, tenderly, his mouth covered hers, and she yielded to his touch with a soft cry of wonder, feeling a sort of raw electricity tingle through every nerve and spreading down from her brain to her hooves. It was though she had been waiting for this gentle expression from him all her life, and her heart beat wildly in her chest to the beat of a different gallop.

She brushed his cheek with her fingers as they trailed up into his dark hair. Their kiss was hungry and needful, almost desperate in their mutual flood of repressed desire.

A rustle and snap of foliage caused Severus to stiffen, and he jerked away from her, his eyes wide and face stricken with self-flagellation. "I'm sorry," he said hoarsely. "I shouldn't have… forgive me, He—Ms Granger. This will not happen again." He wheeled on his hind legs and shied backwards.

"Severus, wait," Hermione's call trembled as she tried to gather her thoughts. Her hand reached out and touched his flank. "Please… it was not… unwelcome." Hermione's face pleaded with him to stay. Her mind was whirling with a hundred different things she wanted to say, but couldn't untangle her thoughts any better than she could her extra limbs just after her change.

Severus looked aghast. His face was even paler than usual. There was something raw in his gaze. "You couldn't mean that," Severus said bitterly, denial eating away at his heart.

"Do you really think I would say something I didn't mean, Severus?" Hermione asked in a half whisper. Her voice wavered. Her hand was petting his flank in placation, instinctive but effective.

Severus grimaced, his lips flattening as he took a step towards her and then another. He tilted his head to the side, staring into her face. He saw the pain there, and he flinched, guilt for hurting her warring with the disbelief. He reached out to touch a lock of her curly hair, which, ironically, had become a bit less wild with her transformation, tapering down her back in a longer and straighter cascade the further it traveled.

He gently touched her ears with his fingers, causing her ears to flick from the sensation. Her eyes closed in pleasure as he touched her, and she let out a soft whicker.

Severus let his other hand drop and slowly caress the skin of her arm. Languidly, his head dipped down, and he pressed his mouth to hers once more, and everything else faded into the background.

As his arms wrapped around her torso and pulled her close, neither of them noticed the slight tingle in their hair as a pale moonflower poked out from behind their ears and unfurled, tiny wisps of pollen scattering in the afternoon breeze to the sound of tinkling hooves.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-

"Severus! Please!" Hermione's voice was half-broken with an equine squeal of distress.

"It's the flower, don't you see?" Severus hissed. "It's all in our heads because of the flower!"

The black centaur half reared in his anger and frustration. He pulled at the flower behind his ear and shook his head in pain as trying to remove it was akin to ripping off a part of his body. He shook his head frantically, his tail whipping around and hooves stomping.

Hermione tried to approach again, but Severus shied away from her.

"It's the plant!" Severus insisted, keeping her a body's length away from him. "You're not thinking clearly!"

"This isn't a new feeling, Severus!" Hermione pleaded. "The plant hasn't addled my mind!"

"Well, it's addled mine!" Severus yelled at her.

Hermione froze in place, her ears going flat against her head. Her tail stilled. "What are you saying?"

"That is not me, Professor Granger!" Severus insisted, reverting to her title and last name like a shield. "It's not real! I do not… care for you like that!"

"How can you say that after—"

"It was pheromones, some sort of chemical signal brought on by that damnable flower! You can't trust it, Her—Professor Granger!" Snape's voice trembled as his face twisted in a different kind of agony. "I cannot trust it!" His voice was broken, as though saying it made it real, and the reality he was seeing was not positive. "Don't you see?" he whispered brokenly. "I couldn't bear to see the disgust when it wears—" Severus flinched, realising he had said more than he intended.

Hermione trotted up closer in a blur of movement, glaring up into face with both stubbornness and fury. "Severus Tobias Snape," she flung at him. "I am familiar enough in my own mind to know that I have not be unduly influenced by a plant! I care for you! I have cared for you for a long time, now. The only reason I have not told you anymore sooner is that every time I've have tried to even hint us going out and… catching a Muggle dinner and a movie, you back peddle like I'm toxic waste!"

She stared at him as a tear went down her face. "Am I so unattractive? Does the very thought of being with me disgust you so much that you think the only way you could is because of a plant?" She gestured to her body as her eyes flicked across his face. "We've been friends for longer than we were teacher and student. We've been colleagues for longer than that. Can you not be honest with me? Have I imagined that you enjoy my company?"

Severus looked into her eyes, his black irises wavered with emotion he hadn't managed to Occlude. "I can't," he whispered, his fists clenching to stop himself from touching her. "Don't you see? If you let me have you—I will never be able to let you go. It would break me. I am already broken. I wouldn't survive it. I wouldn't—"

Hermione arms were around his waist, slamming herself into him and burrowing her face into his chest as her hands wove into his mane and clung to him tightly. "Severus, you big dunderhead," she muttered into his sternum.

Severus shuddered as her arms tightened around him, and he pressed his face into her hair. His arms slowly enfolded her as he let out a ragged breath, his body trembling as he crushed her to him. "I'm sorry." His hand touched the back of her hair and pulled her head under his chin. "You deserve better than me."

Hermione tucked herself against him. Her hand brushed the side of his face as her fingers curled around his ear, brushing against the moon flower behind it. She tugged on the flower and pulled his head down. "Stop talking," she said as stared into his face. "Stop thinking."

Severus' dark eyes flickered with emotion. "Bossy witch."

"You're still talk—mmmph," Hermione replied, cut off by the descent of Severus' mouth to hers.

-o-o-o-o-o-

Deeper in the forest, Magorian and Firenze stood around a shelter they were constructing in the encampment. They stopped the small herd of younglings from tromping down the path.

"Ho there, younglings," Magorian chuckled. "Why don't you go and collect beetles wing coverletss for our honoured guests. This time of year their colour will be vibrant and they will be trying to eat our crops with a vengeance."

"Yes, Magorian!" the young centaur laughed, grabbing their nets excitedly.

Bane stomped a hoof as he heaved a part of the shelter up on one side, and one of the visiting centaur grabbed the other end to help him.

"How did you know we were running low on fishing lures?" the visiting centaur asked.

Bane gave a snort. "Every year we check our stores around this time of year. It's not a big leap for us to make."

"I suppose not," the other centaur said, tying the beam in place and dragging the covering over it. "How do you feel about being one of the first herds to have foals going to school with the humans?"

Magorian sighed as he tied the supports together and stared towards Hogwarts, even though the castle was not visible from deep within the forest. "There was a time, Janus, where I would have led my people to their deaths before thinking such a thing possible, but Hermione challenged the system for our sake, giving us the rights we were denied for centuries. She slept under the stars with our herd, learned our ways, and respected them, all while others before her were simply happy we didn't go to war on sight. Now are forests are our own to police, our larders are full, and we don't have to worry about our foals running into that next of acromantulas anymore."

"Acromantulas?" Janus snorted. "You have giant tropical spiders in your forest?"

Bane curled his lip. "A long story, Janus," he grunted. "Needless to say, when that side of the forest went up in flames, it was not only the centaur that breathed a sigh of relief."

Firenze shook his mane. "Hagrid would have put the fire out himself with tears, if you can imagine a half-giant crying over the 'tragedy' of it all."

Janus swished his tail. "Does this half-giant live in the forest as well?"

"He does not live in the forest," Bane said bitterly. "He inflicts his projects upon it."

Janus tilted his head. "Forgive me, I have no idea what you speak of."

Magorian placed a hand on Bane's withers, causing the centaur to calm slightly. "Hagrid is a half-giant professor at the school, Janus. He has projects that range from highly dangerous animals, magical creatures, and… personal taming projects."

"He set loose a giant into our forest, tying it to a bloody tree!" Bane seethed. "The giant crushed the leg of one of our colts who was collecting herbs on the trail and traumatised the other three that were with him so badly that they couldn't do anything but squeal in terror every time shadows moved in the forest for months!"

"A giant? Truly?" Janus' eyes went wide. "This is not the home of any clan of giants I know of."

"I fear that is the trend for most of his projects, Janus," Firenze said with a shake of his head. "They are all well meaning in his own mind, but they threaten not only us here in the forest but the foals at the school."

"Zoticus told me that Hermione's history as both scholar and warrior was greater than she ever let on when she visited us," Janus said. "Is it because of this… Hagrid?"

"No, I fear Hagrid's little projects are unique unto themselves," Magorian said with a huff of air, "but, I would be lying if I said she was not affected by them, as all of us have been. Both she and Severus bear many scars of the war, as did many who took part. The centaur were were not the only ones to suffer."

Janus nodded as a small miniature herd of younglings went stampeding past, their nets out as they chased their beetle targets. "We're going to up to our waist in beetle wing covers."

Bane laughed. "Well, if any of your foals botch fly tying like Silverhoof over there," Bane said with a gesture to the Appaloosa colt in the bunch, "then you will need extras."

Janus sputtered. "We do have a few that have not grasped the subtlety, but they tend to jump feet first into the river like a bear after a salmon."

Firenze looked amused. "Do they catch the salmon?"

"Right to the face, like a proper bear," Janus confessed.

"Well, at least they have that sorted," Bane snickered, patting Janus on the withers.

The other centaur shook his head and whickered.

At that moment, Hermione came cantering through the encampment, and a trail of young foals, colts, and fillies were latched onto her, with the youngest trying to stay at her side like she was their dam. The slightly older ones had her by the hands as they dragged her off into another part of the woods, all of them chiming in to things they wanted to show her.

"I'm only one person!" Hermione squealed, her ears flicking back and forth as she was pulled in multiple directions.

Severus walked in a more dignified fashion, obviously relieved that he did not have an entourage of young centaur clinging to his body. He gazed off to where Hermione disappeared into the forest with a strange expression on his face.

"Why are you not over there with your mate, brother?" Bane asked with amusement. He crossed his arms in front of his chest with a very human expression of gratification on his face.

"My… what?!" Severus jerked his head up, his ears flattening against his head. "No! She's not my mate!"

"I beg to differ," Bane ribbed him. "Her scent is all over you."

The other centaur looked at Severus like he was the worst liar ever.

Severus flushed, realising that Occlumency was great for the mind, but not so good for the scent. He suddenly found himself very glad that Voldemort was against "half-breeds," otherwise his tenure as a spy would have been caught the moment he smelled the lie. "We are not mates," Severus tried again.

Bane put his arm around Severus' shoulder, and shook his head. Strangely, Severus found it comforting, which surprised himself.

"The flower calls you a liar, brother," Bane said after a moment, jutting his chin at the flower in Severus' black hair. "Does she have to be heavy with foal before you stop lying to yourself?"

"What!" Severus sputtered.

"You'd think he'd remember doing that, Bane," Firenze quipped as she pulled the last of the shelter cover over the frame he was finishing. "it does take a certain amount of mutual acrobatics."

Severus turned a bright shade of crimson in contrast to his pale skin.

"Do not be embarrassed, Severus," Magorian chuckled. "You are a fine stallion. You have a sharp mind, four strong legs, a thick mane and tail, and a shiny coat of health. If our herd's mares hadn't already been mated, you'd probably have had multiple 'dates' and offers of companionship by now."

Severus paled in something akin to fear at the very thought of being pursued as a 'good catch'.

Firenze patted Severus on the withers and smiled. "It is as they say, my brother. Fortunately, all of the unmated mares have been paired off before now, which spared you the further embarrassment. I had been worried that this was not the case, but it seems nature was in a hurry while we had business at Hogwarts."

Severus managed to look uncomfortable, or, rather, more uncomfortable.

"Speaking of Hogwarts," Firenze said, bowing to Magorian in a dip of his front legs. "I must confess that I knew nothing of Professor Longbottom's work with the moon flower, Magorian. He said his only thought was the cure of his sire and dam."

Bane stiffened at being reminded that Neville had "stolen" moon flowers from the heavily centaur-lived areas of the forest, though whether it was the theft or the fact he had done it without any of them noticing that was bothering him was unknown.

Magorian looked thoughtful. "The human does not know our ways, not like Hermione made a point to learn, nor was he like Severus who learned simply by accompanying her into the herd lands. I know his like, much like Pomona Sprout who came into the forest for cuttings and plants. Pomona, however, at least asked us before taking. She was always polite and respectful."

The elder centaur flattened his lips together and stomped his front legs. "He has not infringed upon us until this point, so I would speak with him and hear his story. He is not the only one of this world who has ever wished to cure a loved one of sickness. If you would, Firenze, I would have you take a message to your human colleague. Tell him we must meet for a discussion a week's time. If he does not, however, I will consider his actions an intentional disrespect."

Firenze nodded. "As you wish, Magorian. It will be done."

Severus seemed to realise another question had to be asked. He dipped himself down on his front legs and bowed. "Magorian, I and Hermione were analysing the pollen and sap for Professor Longbottom. What would you wish of us?"

Magorian rubbed his chin with his fingers, thoughtfully. "You may continue your analysis, Severus. If the plant somehow can help heal the mind of a human, then I will not deny him that cure. My only request is that if such a cure comes to pass that it not become something that has scores of humans invading centaur territories on a mad hunt for the flowers. I cannot condone anything that will endanger our people, especially the vulnerable foals. Is this agreeable to you?"

Severus nodded. "It is fair, however, perhaps it would be better for you to request this of Longbottom rather than I. He and I have a… poor working history."

Firenze chuckled. "He means that, Magorian. They are like the north winds meeting the south and creating a twister."

Severus pinned his ears to the side but nodded with a sigh. "Fair enough."

Magorian shook his head. "As you wish. I will discuss it with him."

Magorian huffed a puff of air and then shook his head as a more cheerful demeanor settled back upon his countenance. "Off the record, his actions have reminded us of the gift the flower has always been said to give, and it was time, perhaps, for us to remember such things. The news will spread far and wide once our honoured guests leave us to return to their territories."

A blood-curdling scream pierced the grove, and the centaur mares whinnied in distress, calling their foals to them as they herded them away. The young centaurs around Hermione glued themselves to Hermione as the youngest dove between her legs, and Hermione had her wand out even as other centaurs gathered around her, helping herd the young back towards their alarmed dams and sires.

Severus was immediately by Hermione's side, pressing up against her flank as Firenze pressed up against her other side. Magorian and Bane pushed up like the forward guard, blazing forth with arrows notched on their bows.

The small group of young centaur that had gone out to gather fly-tying materials, cantered by Magorian and Bane, whinnying in distress. They made a bee-line towards the other centaur, pressing up against them as they fidgeted.

"A human!" one of the colts exclaimed.

"It turned into a human!" a filly replied.

Hermione and Severus exchanged glances. They advanced forward together, Firenze with his bow drawn and they with their wands.

Magorian and Bane had their bows drawn back and pointed to the ground where someone or something was writhing on the ground, moaning piteously. As they approached they saw tight blond curls, a gathering of ornate feathers around the collar that was drawn into a choker, and gaudy, painted nails dug into their sides as they moaned.

Blood trickled down mangled clothes as the victim lay in the scattered collection baskets of brightly coloured beetle wing covers the young centaur had been gathering. The robbed beetles, however, were not lasting long, as a number of hungry birds had gathered to cash in on the free meals provided by the youngling's hard work.

Hermione pointed her wand down towards the moaning victim's face, using the tip of her wand to move the blond hair to the side. She snorted in surprise, practically falling over herself to back up a few paces.

Severus looked down, and his eyes widened as he recognised the somewhat older but distinctive face of Rita Skeeter.

Of course, the young centaur had been harvesting beetles, and she had been just another shiny beetle with perfectly useable coverlets. Perhaps, she might have been able to crawl away, humiliated and wingless, but alive, had it not been for the group of hungry birds that all too eagerly descended on her after one of the young centaur had cast her body aside.

Rita Skeeter was convulsing for quite some time before something seemed to break. The Daily Prophet reporter stared fearfully at them, her eyes moving frantically, but her body now terribly still. Blood continued to ooze out her mangled back.

"We will take her to St. Mungo's," Severus said as Hermione was already lowering herself down to place her hands on Rita's arm to side-along Apparate her. Severus waved his wand, and a silvery doe leapt from his wand and bounded towards Hogwarts.

Hermione and Rita disappeared with a loud crack, and Severus disapparated shorted after with an echoing crack.

"I suppose the secret is going to be out, now," Magorian said, relaxing his bow arm. "Whether they are ready for it or not."

Firenze and Bane exchanged worried glances.

"I do not imagine either of them having wished to come out as centaur like this," Firenze said.

Janus and Zoticus came up with a few other of the herd members, having insured that the young were safely led away with the rest of the joined herds. "Magorian?" they chimed together, their bows primed for instant use. They relaxed when they noted that Magorian and his comrades were not ready to attack. "What happened? The colt said he was just collecting wing coverlets from the beetles and threw the rest to the birds when it turned into a screaming woman?"

"Animagus," Firenze said.

Zoticus frowned. "The human turned itself into an insect? I thought they could only be animals."

Magorian narrowed his eyes. "Time to move our camp. There is no telling what the human saw or heard while she was here or what her agenda was. We should not risk the foals or our combined people to unknown risk."

"I will tell the others," Zoticus said, wheeling around on his rear legs and trotting back the way he came.

Firenze fidgeted, tail swishing.

Bane touched the base of Firenze's mane and blew out a puff of air in a huff. "They will be fine. Severus is a survivor, Hermione is tenacious, and neither are the type to let their new condition keep them from doing the right thing. They will not expose us to more danger if they can help it. If anything I have learned from my own stubborn past is that they will do the best they can to save both centaur and human alike."

Firenze gave a small, grim smile. "It is not them I worry for, herd-brother. It's the humans at the other end of the Apparate."

-o-o-o-o-o-

There was a flurry of movement and some screams of surprise as Hermione and Severus Apparated into St Mungo's. Hermione stood back on all fours from her crouch to pull Rita's body with her through the Apparition.

"I need a healer here!" Hermione yelled. "Back injury and lacerations!" she elaborated, pulling from the knowledge of hearing Poppy Pomfrey speak to her fellow nurses in the Hogwarts' hospital wing.

Healers dressed in the deep green designating their healer positions came flying out of the various crannies of the Apparition Point, hurrying to bring Rita's body off the area before another Apparition came into the public landing.

The healers came right up, ignoring Hermione's appearance in favour of the patient, and by the time Severus landed in the Apparition point, another healer in darker green robes and a silver lead healer pin came rushing up to speak with her.

"What happened Ms… er… Hermione Granger isn't it?" the healer had to look up at her due to her increased height. "It's me, Healer Oswald. I've handled some of the students you've brought in from Hogwarts for special therapy a few occasions, if you remember me?"

"Of course, Healer Oswald," Hermione answered, her hooves prancing on the marble floor with a bell-like tone.

People were gathering and whispering loudly, pointing to Hermione and staring, seemingly more interested in her appearance than Rita being hoovered out another room. Severus scowled, pulling out the face he normally reserved for Neville Longbottom, and the crowd gasped and parted, darting behind pillars to peek around it occasionally.

"If it wouldn't be too much trouble, I have a private room we can speak," Oswald said. "You can tell me what happened?"

Hermione nodded gratefully, feeling Severus's warm flank against hers as he glowered at the staring crowd.

"This way, Professor Granger," the healer said with a holding out of his arm. "Follow me."

The two centaur dwarfed the healer as they followed him, and he had to expand the door to fit the two half-equine bodies through the normal human-sized doors. He pulled the doors closed behind them and pulled the blinds, shutting out the prying eyes, narrowing his eyes as people were trying to sneak up and get more looks at the two rather unique guests to the hospital.

"If you don't mind me asking, Professor Granger," Oswald said awkwardly. "The last time you were here, I distinctly recall you not having quite so many legs. Did something happen?"

Hermione snorted, her ears flicking. "Two words, Healer Oswald."

"Neville Longbottom," Severus sneered. He kept his body against Hermione's.

"Ah, yes," Oswald said. "I've treated a few of his students that got a little too close to the frisky venomous tentacula when Poppy sent them over. He and his co-Aurors used to be in here once a week for some ailment or another. You'd think he was Hit Wizard with the frequency we see him."

Hermione harrumphed and nodded.

"Can you tell me what caused the injuries of the woman you brought in?" Oswald asked.

Hermione exchanged glances with Severus, and he leaned closer to her silently. "She was in a beetle Animagus form, spying on the centaur when it happened. I didn't see it, but the children were collecting the wing coverlets to make fishing flies and she was hiding with with the other beetles, or so I'm guessing. One of the… children dewinged her and tossed her to the birds, thinking her a normal beetle, and I think the birds snapped her up before she could transform back. By the time she did, it was too late. The damage had been done."

"She's an Animagus?" Oswald said. "More paperwork, I fear. The Registry is always informed on incidents involving Animagi when they don't bear the pin of the Registry."

Hermione nodded grimly.

"Do you have her name, Professor Granger?" Oswald asked.

"Please, call me Hermione," Hermione asked. "I get enough of that from my students. As for her name, it is Rita Skeeter."

"Merlin, that was her?" Oswald paled. "I will admit I was looking at her wounds instead of her face, and please, call me Bryan, Hermione. We've seen each other enough to warrant a little casual courtesy."

Hermione smiled and nodded affirmative.

Bryan waved his wand, and a bright magpie Patronus zoomed out of the room with its message to the other healers.

"Well, now that the business it taken care of," Bryan said with a sigh. "May I ask you about how you came to… end up like this?"

"I fear as with anything Neville Longbottom," Severus said with a curl of his lip, "he can cause transformations and time travel without intending to. Once he had the entire school acting like they were under the influence of Amortentia, and I guarantee you finding the cure took far longer than it took him to randomly make it. He sent a lab partner back in time a three months deaged into a toddler. It took Headmaster Dumbledore a month to restore her back to normal and the rest of the next few months to get her to stop randomly transforming into whatever non-human animal she was in the morning upon waking up."

Oswald looked mortified. "That does explain some of the frantic Patroni I get from Poppy from time to time. She always asked for the oddest opinions of transfiguration and potion therapy dose effects. She has always been good about getting second opinions before doing something drastic. Now, I know why."

Severus rolled his eyes. "I could write you a novel."

Oswald looked like he was about to bust with curiosity. 'Hermione, I am not normally this forward, but, I have never been able to examine a centaur up close. Even if this is temporary, do you mind if I—?"

Hermione whickered softly. "Go ahead, Bryan. I can practically smell the curiosity leaking out your ears."

Bryan flushed and began to look Hermione over. He waved his wand over her, ran his hands over her body. He picked up her hooves, checked her skin, picked through her mane, and even examined inside her ears and mouth. He gasped as she saw the elongated canines in her mouth and the elongated claws on her hands. "Amazing, Hermione. "Never in my life did I think I'd see a centaur up close.

Severus, who was eyeing the healer with a guarded expression, kept his hand on Hermione's withers, gently rubbing the base of her mane.

"What a fascinating design," Oswald noted, tracing the flower vines up her arms. "I've never seen such lifelike ink. It moves like there is a breeze. I almost expect it to emerge from your skin. Whatever it is he did to bring this about, it is amazing."

Severus shook his head. "If you ever feel like undergoing some random transformation or have the unexplainable need to snog everyone around you, Healer Oswald, by all means, visit Mr Longbottom more regularly. In fact, by all means, invite him here as often as you wish. I beg you."

"Severus," Hermione huffed, nudging into him with her equine shoulder.

The black centaur gave an equine grunt, but Oswald gave a genuine laugh. "I fear I must fill out that paperwork for Ms Skeeter's admission to the hospital. The Aurors must be informed so they can insure no Dark magic was involved, the Registry needs to be notified, and all that. Thank you both for bringing her in. I'm sure your current predicament could have had you question the wisdom of exposing yourself to the crocodiles out there." He gestured to the hall with his hand. He seemed to think of something. "If you wish, I can lead you to the private Apparition area, if you wish to leave less conspicuously. It is the Healer area, so normally no one but the staff uses it to come and go."

"Thank you, Bryan," Hermione said warmly. "I appreciate your consideration."

The healer nodded with a happy smile. "No problem at all. Thank you for allowing me to examine you."

Hermione quirked the corner of her lips. "Healers are as curious as cats. Trust me, I know both."

Healer Oswald gave her a warm grin as he took her hand. "We'll take care of Ms Skeeter, no worries. I fear I cannot notify you as to her condition due to privacy concerns, but she will be in good hands here."

The two centaur nodded and allowed him to guide them to the private Apparition point, happy that the Healer took his Oath very seriously. Centaur or not, the man valued all life, even that of Rita Skeeter, who was may or may not have been deserving of such respect.

As the dual crack of Disapparition resounded in the empty hospital area, Healer Oswald turned on his heels and disappeared down the hall to face the mountain of paperwork that was undoubtedly waiting for him.

-o-o-o-o-o-

 _ **Heroic Hogwarts' Professors Turned into Centaur By Botched Magic Save Reporter and Illegal Animagus Rita Skeeter From Certain Death**_

 _Odd things have been happening recently, and it seems that it's either in the water or in the air._

 _Two well-known professors at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry have been turned into centaur thanks to a botched potion mishap. Rumour has it that Professor Longbottom was involved, but he was unavailable for an interview._

 _Professors Hermione Granger and Severus Snape have been transformed into centaur do to the latest accident at Hogwarts, which was, ironically, not caused by a student bungle. A number of students interviewed stated that the last time Professor Longbottom was let in the Potions classroom, Professor Snape had banned him from setting foot within 100 feet of the Potion Classroom, lest something terrible happen due to his general vicinity._

 _Headmistress Minerva McGonagall assures the public that despite their changed appearance, both professors are completely in command of their faculties and that classes will resume on Monday without delay. She stated that there would be some change in the doorways, quarters, and eating spaces due to their increased size accommodations, but it is nothing unsurmountable to fix in a short period of time._

 _In other news, our very own reporter, Rita Skeeter, has been hospitalised with severe spinal injuries due to being predated upon while traveling around in her unregistered and illegal Animagus form in the forests surrounding Hogwarts. Fortunately, Professors Granger and Snape from Hogwarts were nearby to offer assistance, Apparating the injured reporter to St Mungos before she succumbed to her injuries._

 _Skeeter, who was found in a restricted area of the Dark Forest that is only travelled freely by certain staff of Hogwarts and the resident centaur, had not only been using her Animagus form to circumvent the gates of Hogwarts but also managed to rile up the local herd of Centaur who have always valued their privacy._

 _The Animagus Register cautions wizards and witches that it is because of the inherent dangers of taking an animal form that learning the skill without supervision can be dangerous in many ways. Being caught by an animal form's natural predators is only one danger of many._

 _Skeeter's Animagus form, which is reported as a shiny blue beetle with spectacle markings, had caused an uproar of reports from indignant witches and wizards who have seen the very same beetle from every place such as private meetings at the Ministry to in their private residences. Questions regarding her illegal use of her form to invade the privacy of their lives, homes, and workplace have flooded both the Auror's Offices and the Animagus Registry with complaints and demands for justice._

 _Mr Harry Potter, Supervising Head Auror, stated that Rita's case was being taken very seriously._

" _There is nothing wrong with being an Animagus," Mr Potter said in an interview. "I know quite a few people who are Animagi. The problem in this case, however, is that she's both unregistered and using her form to invade privacy as well as for spying. This is the kind of thing that ruins the game for perfectly decent people who follow the rules."_

 _Charges have been brought up against Ms Skeeter from multiple parties on top of the main charges of being an illegal Animagus who purposely did not register. Accounts are being taken as to how far back the transformations and spying goes back, and penalties for trespass, spying on Ministry/Auror secrets, invasion of privacy, and unlawful gain of information are only the surface of what will undoubtedly lead to time in Azkaban and even longer time in community service._

 _Each confirmed case of Ministry and Auror secrets spying starts with five years in Azkaban per incident. While the tally has not been officially totalled, Ms Skeeter is looking at over a thousand years of time served, if all of the cases being reported from the public are confirmed. There are countless more being tallied at the Auror Office and the Ministry in secret due to the sensitivity of the information._

 _Whether kharma or irony, Skeeter's injuries have proven dire enough that regenerative therapy is not working._

" _Skele-grow can replace bones," Healer Randle said, "but nerves are an entirely different sort of business. Some of the magical species are capable of regeneration naturally, but the normal human body was not meant to lose parts of your spine and survive."_

 _Rita Skeeter's career until now has been filled with both excitement and controversy. Her biographies of two Headmasters of Hogwarts, Armando Dippet and Albus Dumbledore were so full of stretched truth and outright lies that the type of journalism she preferred has been dubbed "doing a Rita Skeeter." A green auto-quill has been released on the market by Weasley Wizarding Wheezes called the "Skeeter" which writes only things so outrageous that no sane person would ever consider it truth._

 _George Weasley, proprietor of the business, says that half of all proceeds sold of the "Skeeter Quill" will be donated to St Mungo's Research Fund for Magical Maladies and Injuries. Ironically, Rita Skeeter has been isolated in a section of St Mungo's that deals with physical injuries not caused by magic._

-o-o-o-o-o-

 **A/N:** Oh, hrm… someone was sticking her antennae in the wrong place. I don't imagine Rita is going to be in any condition to snoop after this, even with healers. Do I have a problem with Rita? Probably. She's not quite as horrible as Umbridge, but I rate her pretty horribly close.


	4. Chapter 4 Kink in the Hose

**A/N:** All mistakes are my own sleep brain. My normal beta has a busy, busy life atm, and I don't hold it against her! :D

 **Chapter 4: Kink in the Hose**

" _The basis of shame is not some personal mistake of ours, but the ignominy, the humiliation we feel that we must be what we are without any choice in the matter, and that this humiliation is seen by everyone."_

 _\- Milan Kundera_

"Class dismissed," Hermione said, and her students shuffled out of the classroom. She was getting use to the extra stares and being able to hear a student whisper from across a noisy room, and part of her wondered if Severus was an even greater terror to his students now that he could pick up on everything they were whispering about him behind his back.

"I know you are looking at me, Miss Weasley," Hermione said with amusement, her tail flicking side to side. She cleaned the lab tables with a flick of her wand. Each of the tables had been moved and the room expanded to make room for Hermione's change in size and body. She could not comfortable walk up and down the aisles without knocking over the cauldrons or stepping on her students.

Trampling your students was still frowned upon in 90% of the civilised world. To be fair, Centaurs did have a higher percentage for accidental trampling than a human. More legs made that easier.

Rose Weasley poked her head around the door frame and stared at Hermione with wide eyes. Two other sets of eyes joined her.

Hermione shook her mane and closed up the classroom, walking out the enlarged door and ducking to get through the frame. She closed the classroom and warded it. Rose stared up at her with wonder, staring at her like she was a giant.

Two of the goblin students were looking up at her, and Hermione bared her teeth in polite Goblin greeting.

"Lady of Silver," the two Goblin greeted in Gobbledygook.

"Miss Notchknife," Hermione greeted. "Mr Steelhook. What brings you here outside of class?"

Notchknife blushed, goblin-style, which is to say she turned a strange shade of greenish-red.

Hermione chuckled. "Who says goblins do not have curiosity?" she said to them quietly. "Walk with me to the Great Hall?"

The three children nodded up and down eagerly.

Hermione walked with them to the Great Hall, trying not to smile as they raked their gazes over her as she walked. Goblin or human, it made no difference. Given half a chance, each would take the opportunity to oogle over Hermione's centaur body. The only ones that didn't seem to want to get a closer look were the centaur younglings, which had the covetous honour of being the only students who could touch their centaur professors due to the herd status.

Rose and the goblin students shuffled off to the Great Hall, looking back at Hermione with unmasked longing to stay with her rather than go eat. Rose been very vocal on how "cool" it was that her "Auntie had gone centaur," and was equally adamant that had her father married Hermione instead of Lavender that she would have had the "coolest mum ever."

When Lavender had gotten wind of her daughter's switch from "horse fancy" to "centaur fancy," she had misconstrued her daughter's obsession with centaurs as being an attention gathering ploy by Hermione. She had stormed to Hogwarts with Ron in tow to give Hermione what for, accusing Hermione of trying to turn her daughter against her.

Her arguments had fallen flat when Lavender and Ron realised that Hermione's condition hadn't been made up by the Prophet, and she was truly a centaur. Not only that, Ron was horrified to realise that Severus had been transformed as well, and his wife was now making oogly eyes at his hated Potions professor's shapely equine hybrid body much like she had at Firenze's back in the day.

Firenze had ribbed the frustrated Severus afterwards, telling him he now had centaur sexual appeal as a passive weapon. Severus had give him such a look of disbelief and frustration that both Hermione and Firenze had bust into laughter together.

It had taken a prybar and the will of Merlin to get Lavender to leave Hogwarts and stop staring at Severus and Firenze with wide doe eyes. Hermione had actually felt a little sorry for Ronald. He couldn't exactly compete with centaur for raw animal appeal. She was thankful, at least, that her magnetism seemed to attract younglings but not google-eyed male students like Severus and Firenze seemed to attract female attention. Having a mini-herd of centaurs glued to her was far less embarrasing.

As if summoned by Hermione's thoughts, three of the first centaur students of Hogwarts came rushing up, whickering happily. A colt and two fillies rubbed up against her. The youngest was so much smaller that she seemed only as tall as a human child might be, and she dove between Hermione's legs for reassurance as she would her dam.

Hermione found herself automatically whickering a soft reassuring sound, and the smaller filly rubbed under her equine belly and legs. The others, while not diving between her legs like a foal, saddled up to her and pressed their bodies to her, stroking her back and their hands and arms and rubbing their human face into her thick mane to smear her scent on themselves. They nickered at her for reassurance, and she touched their backs and withers with gentle strokes.

With three centaur in Hogwarts, the centaur younglings were much more confident. The presence of the herd was an all powerful need, and now, Firenze was no longer the only one they could retreat to when the need was great. Until her transformation, she knew, cognitively, that the centaur valued the herd, but she had a greater sense of understanding how much of a sacrifice Firenze had made during the war. A lone centaur was emotionally compromised in a way that made loneliness in humans seem trivial, and it made Dumbledore's request of Firenze so much more significant.

Whether Albus Dumbledore had known it or not, he had asked Firenze to commit social suicide with his herd. Whether is was for the greater good or not, the cost for Firenze had been great. The only saving grace had been that the centaur had realised that the threat of Voldemort was far more reaching than just to humans. After the battle, centaur had stood with humans as the dead of enemy and ally were tended.

By some miracle, the only loss among the centaur had been a battle-hardened elder named Rockhoof. Had taken countless Death Eaters down before he succumbed, the shafts of his distinctive arrows marked so many bodies. He left behind a number of kin, but when the commit his body to the stars, his children he would rejoin his mate at last, having outlived her for many centuries.

Perhaps, Hermione thought, it was the true turning point. Rockhoof's mate had been killed by humans hundreds of years before. It was through him that much of the hate for humans had been anchored. With his death fighting side by side with human wizards and witches for a common goal, one of the oldest grudges had died with him. After his death, Firenze was accepted back into the herd once more, and the centaur acknowledged Firenze's judgement that to remain stagnant was to deny their people the same evolution they had once experienced due to Chiron's sacrifice.

It had been through Rockhoof's death that Hermione had been allowed to advocate for centaur rights to stand as a sentient people equal to humans. That had opened doors for her helping the Goblin Nation. Now, Hermione was known as the go-to advocate for magical species. Equally ironic, now she was was one. It was almost as if the universe was determined to turn her into a representative and educator regardless of what official job she held.

As the younglings latched onto her with their whickering and relief, Hermione felt a warmth for them, and all thoughts of whether her situation was temporary fled her mind. Their seeking touches were comforting and soothing and it was hard to imagine her life without them. Even in such a short time, she found herself emotionally invested.

Centaur, unlike goblins, did not have the same financial resources to come to Hogwarts, so accommodating for the first centaur students had been a challenge. Thankfully, the Goblin Nation seemed to realise they were making history, and they wanted to be on the winning side of the spotlight. In a groundbreaking show of solidarity, they provided the first trade treaty between the two species. In exchange for guard work in Gringotts and other goblin-run establishments, in which the centaur were very suited, the Goblins provided the funds for school supplies, uniforms, and other such things the young magically talented centaur needed for Hogwarts. It was now common to see centaur in the goblin establishments, and as an added bonus, Aurors reported that crime was down. People were thinking twice about being caught doing crimes around areas the centaur were guarding, even if they weren't patronising the goblin businesses.

Peace and prosperity were finally in the grasp of everyone, and being turned into a centaur seemed terrible minor in comparison.

When had something like being transformed into another species become minor?

Hermione facepalmed, shaking her head as she pinched her nose, a habit she had picked up from Severus. Amusement crept into her mind as the younglings imitated her. It was adorable.

When it came to teaching centaur wand movements, they were perfect imitators by nature. Filius Flitwick said that each of the centaur had show wonderful talent in charms far beyond their year. It also made them very attentive potion students, whose biggest hurdle in class was not accidently stepping on their lab partner or knocking over things with their tail.

"Professor Granger," Severus' voice greeted as he walked down the hallway, and suddenly the little miniature herd of centaur moved to surround him and greet him as they had her only moments before.

Severus froze in place, looking awkward as they loved on him regardless of how he felt about it, but Hermione knew that he privately found comfort from it just as she did. He moved to to stand beside Hermione, pressing his flank against hers as the young filly dove underneath them both, clinging to their combined legs with a soft whicker of happiness.

"Professor Snape," Hermione answered with a pull of her lips.

Severus sniffed, uplifting his chin. "I am going for a walk. Do you wish to… accompany me?"

Hermione smiled warmly. "Of course. You younglings should go into the Great Hall and eat with your friends."

Three sets of eyes stared at her pleadingly to remain. Their hands pet Hermione and Severus automatically as their ears perked forward.

Being a centaur was like signing away your privacy, Hermione thought to herself. She could only imagine what it would be like for a regular human to attempt courtship while being clung to by the neighbour's kids.

"Oh, these aren't my children," Hermione heard herself say to some random suitor. "These are just my neighbour's kids. What were you saying?"

Hermione shook her head. That wasn't going to work. Good thing the person she was interested in was also a centaur. Hermione waved to Minerva up at the front of the Great Hall, and the elder Headmistress nodded knowingly, waving her hand outward to shoo them away.

"Last chance to avoid being stuck with your boring elders," Severus said with a sniff. "Shouldn't you be having...fun with your friends?"

Centaur fillies and colts were insufferably hard to get rid of when they desired the reassurance of the herd. They shook their head adamantly in negative. They might have been convinced had Hermione been alone, but with Severus together with Hermione, it was a proper herd to the younglings and they didn't want to leave.

Severus rolled his eyes and Hermione laughed. They both trotted out of the main doors and towards the greens with the young centaur frolicking around them, laughing and kicking up their heels.

As Severus and Hermione watched over the frolicking youngings who were indulging in the waves, a house-elf popped up when Hermione and Severus managed to fold their legs up in a semblance of "sitting."

"Headmistress sent Polkadots to bring supper, Headmistress did," the house-elf said excitedly. She dragged the oversized hamper of food over to them and thunked it down with a thud. "Picked the best foods, Polkadots did."

Hermione grinned. "Thank you Polkadots," she said, noticing that the house-elf was wearing miniature robes made out of old hogwart's bed curtains. They had been Ravenclaw, apparently, judging by the colour. The Hogwarts house-elves had finally made their peace with Hermione after her "bad start" with them on her S.P.E.W. None of them had wanted to be "free," and Hermione had finally accepted that sometimes freedom was in the mind. Help was in place for those like Dobby who desperately wanted to be free, but there had been a total of one out of all the house-elves that had taken advantage of the new legislature.

Hermione peeked into basket and smiled. She pulled out a pile of apples that she knew would be a hit with the younglings.

Polkadots bowed and disappeared with a pop.

Hermione handed Severus an apple with a grin, chuckling as he arched one satin eyebrow at her.

He bit into it, his eyes never leaving her face.

Hermione flushed, staring down at the ground as she ate her apple demurely.

"You're beautiful," he confessed, his voice terribly soft over the sound of the rolling waves against the shore.

Hermione blushed brightly, unaccustomed to his attention or his even rarer admissions.

His hand lightly touched the back of her hand, his fingers ever so tenderly brushed her skin. She looked at him, caught in the depth of his gaze that somehow seemed to go on forever. It was unguarded... vulnerable. His ears were flicked half to the side and back as his tail twitched, indicating his turmoil in a way so much more telling than he could have been by reading his face alone.

Slowly, she captured his fingers in hers, her slightly curved and clawed fingertips oddly sensitive as they touched his skin. His breathe caught in his lungs and he looked at her with nervous, unpracticed sensitivity. She shimmied her body against his, pressing her equine shoulder to as she pressed her head against his human chest.

Severus shuddered, his arms pulling her to him as his nose sank into her hair, snuffling her slightly. "How was your classes today?" he said. The question was terribly mundane, but Hermione knew what he was really asking.

"It's hard," Hermione admitted. "The staring, sometimes… I can feel their eyes on me. It's like they are so busy looking at my body that they can't pay attention to their classwork. I hear them… whispering, wondering if it's going to be forever or if I'll change back."

Severus rubbed her back, scritching her mane. "It's harder when you can hear them no matter how quiet they whisper, isn't it?"

Hermione sighed. "Yeah." Hermione stiffened.

"What's wrong?" Severus had frozen, worried that he had done something wrong.

Hermione flushed. "I just remembered some of the things Lavender and Pavarti would say about Firenze when they though he wasn't able to hear."

Severus rubbed her back again, a little more insistently.

Hermione knickered softly, relaxing into his touch.

"Did you take part of such conversations?" Severus asked.

"What?" Hermione exclaimed, flushing. "No! I was…" She stopped talking, slumping. "I fancied Ron back then."

Severus grunted.

Hermione wilted. "We all make mistakes, Severus." She gave a whuft and a sigh.

"Hermione," Severus crooned. "I am hardly one to stand on a soapbox about making horrible decisions, though I have tried it from time to time with horrible results."

Hermione looked up at him with a sad smile. "Perhaps it wasn't a mistake."

Severus looked at her, brow arching.

"If I hadn't made that mistake, I wouldn't know that this—" she trailed of, her fingers tracing his chin. "This is right. I've been waiting for this all my life."

Severus placed his hand over her fingers, his face conflicted. "I doubt that when you were imagining who you would be attracted to that it would be decades after a war to your crooked nosed, greasy git of an old Potions professor who tormented your childhood."

Hermione stared at him with a sympathetic look. "Severus, we cannot help who we have come to love. We can only treasure the time we are given with them—" she said, her voice hesitating, "and pray that they feel the same." She averted her gaze painfully.

"Hermione," Severus said quietly, caressing her cheek with a soft whicker. "What I feel for you is powerful. More powerful than anything I have ever felt. Believe me when I tell you that I am worried that you will come to your senses and justifiably remember every reason why you should find someone far more deserving than I."

"You stubborn, stubborn, man," Hermione admonished. "Don't you see? I, too, have done horrible things. Desperate things. Unforgivable things to people who may or may not have truly deserved it. My actions were still unforgivable, and when I look in the mirror, I know I am not blameless. It is not a contest of who did the worst things. It is simply an admission that neither of us are clean of guilt."

Hermione traced the bridge of his nose with her fingertip. "I've known you as a colleague and then a friend for longer than ever I was your student. Don't you think I'd know by now that whatever feelings I have are not some temporary thing?"

The pair of them looked up as the centaur younglings splashed around in the waves of the Black Lake, giggling and splashing water on themselves. They splashed themselves out of the water and cantered up to them, nickering in excitement. With a flop, the trio of younglings settled in beside Severus and Hermione, leaning their bodies against them to join the pileup.

Hermione stroked the youngest filly's hair and mane, smiling as she whickered and snuggled against Hermione's equine body. She wrapped her arms around Hermione's large equine body as the other filly and the foal snuggled in close to her. Hermione's face softened, her gaze seemingly floating far away. "Do you ever think of children, Severus?

Severus looked skyward. "Sometimes, I wonder if my line should have stopped with me. My father was a horrible man. I spent most of my first three decades attempting to separate myself from his overbearing alcoholic and abusive shadow."

"Look at all you have accomplished in spite of him, Severus," Hermione said, her thumb rubbing against the flower where his Dark Mark once marred his skin. "You're intelligent, brilliant, cunning enough to survive two wars, strong enough to serve two masters. There is much you can give the next generation—so much more than the mistakes you long since paid for."

"The truth is, I would never want to have children with you," Hermione said, watching Severus wince as she said it. She gathered his face between her palms and pulled it down, pressing her mouth to his with a gentle press. She pulled away after a moment, her eyes staring into confused ones. "Because you are a centaur, and everyone knows that centaur have foals."

Severus brushed her hair behind Hermione's ear and lowered his mouth to hers. "Insufferable know-it-all," he muttered into her mouth.

The three foals snuggled between them had started snoring fitfully, having exhausted themselves into a deep stupor.

"Only a centaur date could be like this," Hermione chuckled as she watched the younglings snuggle into their bodies.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Hermione stirred against Severus' body with a groggy yawn. The fireplace had burned down to embers in his chambers, but she wasn't cold. They lay together on the centaur-friendly bedding, draped in a blanket that was more for their human halves than the equine lower body.

Severus' arms were wrapped around her human torso, tucking her against his chest and under his head. His pale and almost alabaster skin was warm against her cheek, and she snuggled into it. After insuring the colt and fillies were safely escorted back to their dorms, they had retired together for the first time. Tea and discussion on the properties of the moon flower's pollen and sap had taken up a few hours, but eventually sleepiness had claimed them. For the first time, Severus has invited her to stay longer than just for tea and conversation, and she had agreed.

Severus stirred slightly in his sleep, pulling her against himself with an unconscious movement. She felt comfortable and safe. There had been a time when she had felt safe with Viktor. He had been kind and supportive, but the war had put a strain on their relationship, and by the time the war had ended, she had thought she and Ron had finally come together in a viable relationship. In the end, she had ended up with neither wizard, and her career and crusade for the oppressed magical races had taken what little time she had and obliterated any hope for a long-term commitment.

Severus was far from perfect. His list of inner baggage had been carried back from a time before she was born, but he was far more sensitive than most gave him credit for. He harbored a strong desire to protect what he cared about, even though his methods were often concealed just as much as his emotions.

Hermione caressed his hair with her fingertips, her fingers gently brushing the moonflower in his hair.

Snape's eyes fluttered open, and he focused on her face.

Hermione stared shamelessly. "Hi."

"I'm obviously hallucinating," he replied.

"Why do you say that?" Hermione asked, dragging her finger down the bridge of his nose.

"Have you looked at yourself in the mirror, lately?" Severus asked. "You gorgeous, and I'm most definitely not. You're in my bed, which I can only guess was under duress, and you have the lower body of a horse, which find overwhelmingly attractive. I expect you to kick me in the face, call me something unspeakable, throw the tea service at me, and leave me very soon. Unless, of course, I have somehow blackmailed you to be here, where I supposed you would offer me tea spiked with something deadly and leave me to be found by Minerva when I don't show up to teach classes."

Hermione laughed, and it was a clear bell-like, genuine laugh. "I have a much more appropriate punishment for you for luring me here, Severus," she replied with a warm smile.

"Whatever could that be?" he asked.

"Perhaps, I will inflict myself upon you for a bit longer," Hermione answered. She leaned in close to his face, her nose almost touching his.

Snape's pupils seemed to swallow up his eyes. He swallowed hard. "How long is 'a bit'?"

Hermione breathed against his lips agonisingly close. "As long as you will have me?"

His eyes flickered, and his lips quivered almost imperceptibly. "Always?" he asked, his voice barely a whisper above the hiss of the fire. "I have nothing to give you—no legacy, no inheritance…"

"We can build a life together," Hermione replied. "We can build our own legacy… together."

Snape gave the smallest of smiles. "I like the sound of that."

Hermione pressed her lips to his at last, inducing a low moan from Severus. He pulled her to him, wrapping his arms around her as he hungrily captured her mouth with his.

"Hermione," he breathed, stroking her ears with his fingers.

Hermione's eyes glassed over as he rubbed. The tips of her ears twitched. "Hmmmph?"

"Do you believe in fate, Hermione?" he asked, looking into her eyes.

She soothed his hair with her hand. "I think fate believes in us."

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Hermione peered at the line of beakers she had laid out. Each of them had burbling contents. Severus stared at a line of test tubes as he scrutinised them as well.

Despite rigorous testing, the moon flower pollen and sap seemed completely inert. Both of them tried testing the sap and pollen for healing properties, but either the samples lost their potency very fast or it was completely useless for healing humans.

Save whatever inherent magic had triggered the plants reaction to Hermione and Severus, the two Potion Masters seemed resigned to the fact that it was not meant for humans. The plant snubbed Neville with almost human turn of it's flower head, tilting the end of its flower bud up to the sky in a distinctive snub.

"It's the one plant that really doesn't like me," Neville moaned, cradling his head in his hands. "I wish I could make it understand that it's not even for me. It's for my parents."

Hermione stomped her feet, shifting her weight as she tended the experiments. The three moonflowers whickered at her as she passed, bobbing their heads and dumping a light cloud of pollen on the table and into the air.

"I wouldn't feel bad about it, Neville," Hermione said. "They seem to have bias towards centaur." She collected the pollen and trickles of sap from the cooperating flowers.

Severus, who was tending the far table, walked over to where Hermione was standing. He lightly touched the base of her mane, rubbing the small of her back and her withers with a gentle motion. He nickered softly, and Hermione leaned into him automatically. The three nearby flowers bobbed their flowers, making a light tinkling sound.

Severus checked the samples and exchanged glances with Hermione. They made soft sounds at each other, ears flicking and tails swishing as they whispered to each other. The plants were bobbing their heads as if to music only they could hear.

Neville wilted. "What was I doing wrong?"

Severus, who noticed that Neville was spending more time staring at the floor than at either Hermione or himself, narrowed his eyes. "Professor Longbottom. I may not be an expert in Herbology, but perhaps there must be a link between you and the moonflower for a cure to possible… as a human."

Neville's eyes widened. "But, I don't want to end up—" He clamped his hand over his mouth as he realised what he'd almost said.

Hermione's body had frozen in place. "Go ahead and finish that sentence, Neville," she said coldly, her ears pinned back. "Tell me, what don't you want to end up like?" Her her frozen hand dropped the stirring rod she had on the counter and she flung her hand out to put all the experiments in stasis.

She turned her head with a jerk, her body tense from her head to her tail.

"Hermione," Neville stammered. "I didn't mean—"

Hermione's eyes were filled with fire. Her teeth gritted together.

"I need air," Hermione seethed, wheeling around on her hind legs and trotting out of the laboratory. Her waved her wand, locking down the laboratory area of the classroom with wards, and disappeared out the door with the clatter of her hooves against the stone floor.

Neville wrung his hands and ran his hands through his hair with a moan.

Severus scowled down at Neville with undisguised disdain. "You truly are an imbecile."

Neville slammed his head against his hands and rocked his body. "I know," he moaned. "Merlin's bloody knickers, I know."

"Get. Out," Snape ordered with a scowl. "I'm going to lock up the classroom. Merlin knows if I leave you here alone, you will find some way to blow it up and turn yourself into a pond snail at the same time."

Neville, feeling like a child of twelve again, scurried out the door with his proverbial tail between his legs.

As Severus laid his hands flat down on the laboratory table, the two remaining moonflowers curved their flower heads around his hands and nickered supportively. Snape sighed heavily, closing his eyes. Count on Neville to inadvertently remind Hermione that her condition was not viewed as a natural progression.

She was always the strong one, the accepting one, and the one who accepted change in stride. She had accepted her place amongst the centaur herd without the drama, finding stability in the touch of the herd, and, perhaps the most miraculous of all, accepted him as her most significant person.

Severus squared his jaw. He would not allow Hermione to lose that peace within.

He picked up the two remaining moon flower pots and swept the room, ducking to avoid hitting his head on the doorframe. Hermione was out there somewhere feeling miserable, and it was his turn to be there for her.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **A/N:** So, how do you think Mr and Mrs Granger will respond to their daughter's situation? Muggles, no matter how accepting, might have a problem being able to take a physical transformation of their daughter into a mythical creature in stride.

To be fair, I don't see Neville as being a complete idiot, but I think his luck when it comes to social situations can still be awkward. Ex-Auror or no, I think when it comes to anything regarding his parents and what might be a possible cure will make him more addled in his responses. I don't think he'd intentionally insult Hermione, ever. He just had a knee-jerk reaction to the possibility that he could end up like Hermione or Severus and his tongue got him into trouble.

Severus, however, will still consider him an imbecile. That's why we love the guy. lol.


	5. Chapter 5 Not a Horse

Beta Love: fluffpanda

 **Chapter 5: Not a Horse**

"Hermione?" Severus called to her.

Hermione stood staring out over the forest and Hogwarts, watching the birds fly around the parapets. Her tail flicked back and forth as her ears flicked back and forth. Her hands flung to her face, wiping away her tears as Severus approached. She sniffed, squaring her jaw as he walked up.

Whickering softly, he pressed his flank to hers. "Hermione," he repeated.

"I'm such a fool," Hermione said, stifling a sniff.

Severus put his arm around her human waist and pulled her to him, and Hermione broke apart at the seams, tearfully sobbing into his robes.

"It's so stupid," Hermione sniffled. "It shouldn't have affected me like that. He's not some bigot judging me—"

"You didn't expect him to react to negatively to the possibility of being a centaur, did you?" Severus asked.

Hermione shook her head, holding back tears. "Until then, it hasn't felt wrong. Awkward, maybe, but not wrong. When I'm with another centaur it feels right… not unnatural. Not a fre—"

Severus cut her off by pulling her against him abruptly, his hand bracing her hair as he pushed her head under his chin. "Enough. You are not. I see you, and I cannot help but see beauty, patience, and brilliance." He tapped her head with his index finger. "Not just your mind, Hermione. You shine like a beacon, and most of us cannot help but be drawn to it."

Hermione, who managed to trickle her tears down Severus' ever present and modest frock coat, snuggled against him. She managed to surreptitiously slide her arms under it, bypassing his five thousand some buttons with surprising skill.

Severus stiffened, shocked. He froze in place, his arms locked in place as if afraid to move or, perhaps, afraid that if he did move he wouldn't stop. "Her—"

"Please, Severus," Hermione whispered. "Let me in."

Severus shuddered, his arms wrapping around her torso and pulling her against his partially exposed chest. "You're already in," he replied, stroking her hair as he pressed his nose into her hair. "The tendrils of your unruly mane have woven themselves around my heart."

Her hands, warm and running down the length of his human and equine spine. The moon flowers behind their ears unfurled, nickering to each other. Small pollen horses danced around them as Severus enfolded her completely,

"What am I going to tell my parents?" Hermione murmured into his chest.

"Bad accident with a gene splicer?" Severus asked.

"Even if there was such a thing, Severus," Hermione choked a laugh as she clutched his mane, "I don't think they'd believe that."

"I don't know," Severus quipped. "I think seeing your… very...attractive dorsal stripe might change their mind." He nuzzled her cheek and rubbed against her ear.

"Sever—" Hermione started.

His lips covered hers. He pulled away agonisingly slow, staring into her half veiled eyes. "Is this what you want? What you really want?"

"I want this," Hermione said adamantly, "and I want you out of this unnaturally heavy buttoned doublet before I rip it off with my teeth."

Severus swallowed hard, staring into her face with half fear and half anticipation. His hand slowly moved across his buttons, and one by one they released with his well-practised movements.

Hermione gasped as her hands moved across his alabaster skin. "Smooth and perfect," she whispered.

"Perfectly scarred, more like," Severus said, capturing her hands in his. "You do not need to sugar coat the truth, Hermione. I've seen myself well enough in a mirror."

"No, Severus," Hermione replied. He placed his hands on his upper chest and neck. "No scars." She traced his neckline with her fingers.

Severus' hands moved across his chest frantically as though he was checking to see he still had his body parts, his face twisted in confusion. "I don't understand." He tore off his layers, his robes falling to the ground as he turned on his heels. "My back, Hermione. There should be a spiderweb of scars."

Hermione's hands were warm across his back.

"There's nothing, Severus," Hermione answered. "You skin is perfect. There isn't one scar, only the shimmer of the moonflowers and leaves."

Severus stared into her face with disbelief. "How is this… Hermione, do you have any scars? Something you know you have? Something you'd miss if it wasn't there?"

Hermione looked confused, but she nodded. She pulled down the edge of her halter top down. "A curse hit me here. It never healed quite right."

Severus gently pulled the cloth down and peered at her skin. "It's perfect, Hermione. No scar.

"What?" she gasped, her fingers going to the area she knew the scar was—the place her fingers would trace the lump to remind herself of how close she came to death. Remembering something, she pulled the leather gauntlet from around her arm. She stared at her arm where Bellatrix had so "kindly" carved Mudblood into her flesh with her cursed knife.

"It's gone…" she hiccupped. "The Mudblood scar is gone."

Severus examined her skin. Entwined around her arm, just like where his Dark Mark once lay, was the delicate shimmer of silver-green leaves and the pale silver-white moonflower. The flower phased in and out as they touched the area of skin and then phased out completely.

Hermione wrapped her arms around Severus and snuggled into his body. Suddenly she pulled back, her eyes wide. "Severus! I don't think the healing elixir is something we will be able to make in a cauldron." She held him by the hands and tugged him. "It's in our blood, Severus! I think the cure is in our blood. It's in us!"

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Severus lifted the two vials of blood they had Poppy's help extracting from both he and Hermione. Crimson mixed with silver and green as it sloshed in the vials.

"Not to sound oblivious, Firenze, but what colour is your blood… normally?" Hermione asked.

Firenze swished his tail as he stood nearby. "I cannot speak for everyone, but my blood is quite red, sister. I would say like yours, but that is apparently not the case."

Hermione and Severus stared at the samples with almost identical frowns. Silver and green swirls mixed with red without mixing, giving off a strange marbleized appearance.

Firenze eyed the blood with reverence. "The blood of Chiron, my old friends. It has truly blessed you. I recommend caution. What flows in your veins was not meant to be shared by those not meant to be of the herd. Who knows what could happen—"

Hermione stared into the vials and clasped them in her hands. "I think I will give these vials to Magorian after I isolated the healing properties, if it can even be separated from the blood. It will be up to him what he wishes done with it, and it is probably best if he is the one who speaks with Neville about what he wants done with it… or not done with it. I promised Neville we would examine the plant pollen and sap, but a cure based on centaur blood—"

Firenze shook his mane. "You are wise to consult Magorian, Hermione. When it comes to the health and safety of the herd, he will appreciate your choice to tell him first and yield to him such decisions. He cares about your safety too, you and Severus. You are one of us, now, and it is his duty to protect all of us. Have you spoken to Neville since his… blunder?"

Severus curled his lip, and Hermione shook her mane.

"He avoids me like a plague," Hermione said with a soft sigh. " Honestly, I have no idea what to say to him. It feels… I feel my being around just makes it even more awkward."

" Hermione," Firenze said, putting his hand on her withers gently. "I know it can't be easy to take everything in stride, not that have you haven't done admirably, but I am here for you if you need an ear or the comfort of touch. I know the foals cling to you like creeper vines—"

Hermione nickered softly, rubbing Firenze at the base of his mane. "Thank you, Firenze. Truly. Some of the instincts are so strong… I have a better understanding as to how lonely you felt teaching here with no herd to touch you, comfort you."

Firenze flicked his ears. "Dumbledore meant well, and I knew the centaur could not remain stagnant forever. I did what I had to. Now, even Magorian and Bane realise what I did was for, but I cannot tell you how much of a relief it is to have the herd to goto again. To have them here, Hermione, under the roof of Hogwarts. Can you imagine what would happen if the foals were forced to face an education in such a human place without herd to stabilise their instinct? It is hard enough as an adult after decades of maturity."

"Did he know?" Severus asked, his voice strangely cold.

Firenze stomped a hoof. "No, brother. I do not think humans can ever understand the drive. Dumbledore was a man of much knowledge, but even he could not have known that."

Severus clenched his fist and let out a sigh. "He was a master of getting what he wanted. Even his own death."

Hermione stared into the vials of their blood. "I don't think even he could have known this or planned for it." She stared at the swirling mixture that seemed to defy what she knew of as blood. Blood did not swirl with multiple colours. Blood carried oxygen and nutrients to cells and then carried away waste. Blood was red. Yet, as she stared at the blood, she knew all the rules she had accepted since she was a child had changed. She and Severus were proof of that, but was the world ready to know such things were possible? Where there things best left unknown to the human world?

There had been multiple lessons throughout human history of what happened when a valuable resource was found and subsequently farmed, hoarded, and warred over. One only had to look as far as the Galapagos tortoise, the passenger pigeon, and the West African Black Rhinoceros to see how human interests could destroy a species. The rhino's horn was only thought to be a "medicine" and it had been pursued to death. The Galapagos tortoise was nearly obliterated by sailors who wanted food and had no concern for the tortoise. The infamous Passenger Pigeon was both hunted while it's habitat was destroyed for agriculture. If someone were to find out the horse moonflower had healing properties and could only be found around centaur, how long would it take swarms of people to go tromping through forests looking for either centaurs who were around the flower or simply the flower itself? If her and Severus' blood turned out to be a miraculous cure, how long would it take some misguided person to come knocking either to hope for their blood or, what might even be worse, think all centaur blood had special properties and go hunting them like stock animals?

Even if Neville was given a potential cure for his parents, the Healers would hardly just let him come in and dose his parents with some experimental or new medication. They would want to know where it came from. They would want to analyze it. And, if it worked, they would want more of it.

Firenze, Hermione realised, was right. It wasn't a decision for just she or Severus. Anything that could possibly endanger the herd was bigger than her and, sadly, bigger than Neville's parents. Neville's parents were two people, who while not all there in the head, were alive and not dying of some dire condition where a cure was the only thing keeping them from death. Exposing the centaur to untold publicity could have horrible repercussions. Exposing Neville's parents to an unknown compound could also end badly.

What if the "cure" turned Neville's parents into centaurs? If Neville acted so violently opposed to having it happen to himself, what would happen if his parents suddenly came back to him as centaur? Who would they test any cure on?

"Pardon me, but can I test this on you? It might have a few unique side effects."

That would go over well.

Hermione closed her eyes, unsure what to do with the chain of thoughts going through her head. Magorian and Firenze seemed to think the flowers had a kind of inert sentience of their own. They "chose" to give Hermione and Severus the " gift." If that was true… the only ones that would transform was who the flowers judged worthy. If, and it was a big if, Neville's parents work up as centaur, trying to explain to them it was a "gift" probably wasn't going to go over with them as it did Hermione and Severus. They had years of working with the centaur under their belt to buffer the shock.

" Welcome back to sanity, Mr and Mrs Longbottom. Oh, um, there might be some new life considerations you have to deal with."

Hermione shook her head. That might be enough to drive them right back into St Mungo's.

" What are you thinking, Hermione?" Severus asked, touching her on the shoulder.

Hermione looked grim. "I think we need to be very careful where we step regarding any curative properties of our blood, Severus."

Severus managed to look more sombre than usual. "I was Slytherin and a spy long before this, Hermione. Being careful is, sadly, second nature."

"Have any nice 'careful' ways to introduce my parents to the fact their daughter now had four legs?" Hermione asked.

Severus grunted. "Have you decided how you are even going to get to your parents' place without causing the second coming of Greek mythology to the retirement community?"

Hermione shook her head. "I thought I could Apparate into the garden," she mused. "But lately, they've been having over guests for coffee and dinner more often, and with my luck, they would be when I did. They are so much more social now that they have retired. It's good because… well I'm glad they are branching out and being social instead of it being to the office, sleep, to the office, sleep. Mum had a bad case of empty nest syndrome as she called it. She's much better now she found Clara. They go on massive shopping trips together and splurge at this barbecue place called… Meat."

Firenze looked at her oddly. "Meat?"

Hermione laughed. "It's a thing."

Firenze tilted his head. "Perhaps we should go hunting before you leave to see your parents, Hermione. Bane wishes to help you both to learn to use a bow like a proper centaur, and you could take a haunch of venison to your parents as an… icebreaker. It would qualify as… meat."

Hermione raised an eyebrow. "Hi, mum, dad, I brought you some meat? Pay no attention to the hooves, no really, pay it no mind?"

Firenze shrugged. "Might at least get you through the door, as the human's say. Can't say I know how to handle what comes after."

Hermione blew a strand of her errant hair out of her face. "I've been dodging visits by doing phone calls for weeks now, but eventually, they are going to want a real visit. It's not like me to be away for so long."

"As much as I believe you capable to handling your affairs, Hermione, it troubles me that you'd be going to visit them alone," Firenze said with a stomp. His ears flicked nervously. "It is… unnerving to me to know you are out there without an escort. Even our patrols in the forest go out in pairs if not a larger group."

Severus nodded in agreement, though he seemed just as baffled by his immediate reaction as he was the strange drive to ensure Hermione wasn't alone for longer than necessary. He had confessed he found it strange just how comforting it was to have both Hermione and Firenze near. He allowed the other centaur stallion much more leeway to his personal space that his human self would have balked and retreated from.

Minerva had already authorised the changing of living quarters for the three of them, partially due to the fact she didn't want either Hermione or Severus trying to kill themselves trying to squeeze their bulk into the small human-sized stairwell going down to the dungeons and partially because she knew that centaurs, newly created or not, found comfort in each other. All she had to do was watch how the centaur younglings choose to cling to Hermione, Severus, or Firenze whenever possible. It wasn't codependency in a human sense of the term. It was that sense of herd belonging—as instinctual and natural as the air they breathed.

Hogwarts seemed to agree with Minerva, because no sooner had the ink dried and the wax seal cooled on the Board approval than Hogwart's created a new set of chambers for them. Each of them had separate quarters stemming off a large communal room. One set of doors went out to a shared courtyard that allowed for view of the stars, and other sets of doors let out into the areas they needed: Severus' office near the DADA classroom, Hermione's near the Potions classroom, Firenze's teaching courtyard for Divination, and a door that always seemed to lead to wherever they needed to go.

Hogwarts seemed to think everything was as it should be, and Hermione had secretly wondered if their chambers had become the Come-and-Go Room 2.0. No one had figured out what happened to the magic of the Come-and-Go Room after it had been devoured by Fiendfyre. Most people assumed it was destroyed, and others believed that it had served it's purpose and hid itself away. After the war, Hermione knew better than to think that Hogwarts didn't have its own quirks and personality. Help really did come to those in Hogwarts if the situation was right. What constituted right, however, was up to Hogwarts.

The advantage to Hogwarts "looking out for them" was that it gave a safe place for the foals to visit without breaching their "private chambers," and there were many nights the foals would come to do their homework and be with "their herd." Eventually, they would file out and return to their dormitories, but the positive effect on morale had been easy to see. Most of the Professors said the enthusiasm level of the younglings had increased ten-fold since Hermione and Severus' incident, and all of them arrived in class without the undercurrent of distress that had plagued them on previous occasions. They became more outgoing being social with others thanks to having a stable place to gather themselves as a herd, and Minerva agreed that some adjustment in protocol had be discussed to provide security for the centaur students.

The goblin students, however, didn't seem to have and social qualms the required special handling. Short of some minor staring and curiosity due to the newness of their being there, most of the children surprised the professors and staff by being far more accepting of the changes in Hogwarts than the once prevalent blood-related wars that had been the standard climate of Hogwarts for far more years than they cared to count. They made friends easily, showing far less bias than their adult parents. The climate was changing for the better, and thanks to Hermione teaching a cultural sensitivity class for the students and staff, misunderstandings were far less common. Goblins, for example, showed respect with a baring of teeth in what most humans considered a snarl of hostility. They scowled when paying attention, and they grimaced when concentrating. Thankfully, a smile was still a smile, and it was the common ground that broke the ice.

Hermione smiled slightly. "My problems seem so minor compared to how much we've accomplished," she mused.

"Somehow, I think waking up a centaur is hardly minor," Severus grunted.

"I call it a vast improvement in aesthetic," Firenze commented, his tail swishing.

"You are hardly unbiased, Firenze," Severus answered.

The palomino centaur grinned at him. "Who am I to question the will of Chiron?" he asked with a shrug.

"Incorrigible," Hermione answered with a sniff.

Firenze grinned at them both.

Hermione had placed the vials of blood on the table and had them mixed with a few compounds to serve to separate the compounds. She used a separate Pasteur pipette to suck up the different layers of fluid. Severus worked to analyse each of the different fluids, his face transformed into the typical almost-scowl of concentration he was prone to. Despite his teaching DADA, he hadn't forgotten the skills that had been his life for decades, and it was during times he worked side by side with Hermione that a sort of peace settled on his shoulders.

After about an hour of simmering and separating, they had a few vials of different coloured fluids. Hermione flicked a vial between her fingers and stared at it. Silvery white liquid shone within. Severus took a dropper out and dripped a solution into each vial. Every vial they had separated turned a brilliant gold, and both Hermione and Severus simultaneously facepalmed.

" What is it, Hermione? Firenze asked.

Severus used his hand to brush his hair back from his face. "Everything about our blood is a healing element."

Firenze's eyes widened. "Oh."

-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Harry and Ginny brought Rose and a few of her friends over to the Burrow for a cookout with the Weasley clan for a cookout, and Harry smiled as the children all surrounded Hermione. They took advantage of the more casual atmosphere to ask Hermione for permission to touch her equine body.

Hermione had not come alone, however, and Severus and Firenze were in attendance, watching the children closely as they played together. A young foal was tucked between Hermione's legs the entire time, feeling safe around her herd but unsure how to deal with being social outside of Hogwarts. She had been invited by Rose, and had accepted, but the strain of being in a unknown place surrounded in humans she didn't know had spooked the young filly.

The three older centaur had explained that foals were as confident as they felt safe, and for the young, safety was often measured in the steadiness of their herd. Harry smiled as eventually Rose worked her magic on the young foal, who was named Briarfoot, and lured the young foal to be social with the other girls.

Sarah, Mary, and Rose took turns giggling and oogling at Briarfoot, combing her mane and tail with a soft brush they had pulled out a small woven basket Harry had the sneaky suspicion that they had stolen out from under Molly Weasley's sewing stash. Briarfoot nickered as they braided her mane and tail, filling her long hair with shiny ribbons and shimmering magical streamers thanks to Weasley Wizarding Wheezes.

The girls giggled together, and they stood amazed as the young foal built a cooking fire in a matter of minutes, proudly stoking it into a grand blaze as it created cooking coals underneath.

"How did you do that?" Rose asked. "You didn't even use magic!"

Briarfoot gave her an odd look. "Why would I use magic to make a cooking fire?"

Mary looked excited. "Could you show us how?"

Briarfoot look at Hermione, Severus, and Firenze for approval, and Firenze nodded silently. The young filly smiled and gathered small bits of kindling and tinder as well as a few logs before teaching the group how to make a frame for the fire.

As the children worked on making fires, Harry and Ron worked on cooking the food. Firenze had built a spit and had a large haunch of venison cooking over the coals with startling efficiency. Harry had to admire it as much as he savoured the smell of the cooking meat. Ron was drooling in anticipation, even as he was cooking the other foods Molly had sent out with Hugo.

Ron's youngest son, still too young to go to Hogwart's, kept running back and forth from the house. He tackled his dad from the back, laughed, and scampered back to the Burrow, and the sound of Molly Weasley screeching at him to come back the house made Harry and Ron exchange knowing glances.

Ginny and Lavender were huddled in with Molly, preparing other food for the cookout, and it seemed that Hugo was still so well attached to Lavender that he preferred to run back to her than hang out with his sister and her friends.

"I don't think she knows we're up here, brother," Firenze said with a knowing smile as he turned the spit. "Otherwise Lavender would be up making excuses to oogle over your assets."

Severus flushed, snorting, and Harry felt strangely awkward seeing such playful banter with his old, once hated, Potions professor. Even more unnerving, perhaps, was the attentive presence the two male centaur had with Hermione. It wasn't a creepy sort of attentiveness, but it made the awkwardness Harry, Hermione,and Ron had experienced camping in the Forest of Dean seem like a children worried about cooties.

Harry flushed as Hermione went down to the ground, somewhat awkwardly folding her legs to let her bulk down to the ground by the fire. The moment she did so, Briarfoot whickered and trotted up to her, bonking her head against Hermione's and then settling against her side between her legs with a soft sigh.

The filly's sides were slightly muddy where she had assisted in pulling the other girls out of the marsh reeds. The wetland around the Burrow had covered each of the children with dark brown muck.

"Your mother and nana are going to have a Kneazle," Ron said to Rose as she and her friends settled around the fire. Rose shimmied her rear close to Briarfoot and Hermione, using any excuse to be closer to the centaur. Whether a testament to her bravery or her obliviousness to Snape's reputation, she didn't even flinch when Severus slowly settled in beside Hermione, and Firenze lay down next to him.

Rose giggled."It's just mud, dad," she huffed. "Uncle George said there was hardly a day when they didn't come back covered in mud back in the day."

Ron ruffled his daughter's hair. "Miscreant, this one," he said with a sigh. "Oi, Rose, shouldn't you be down helping your mother?"

"No," Rose protested. "I have friends over tonight. Mum never makes me help when I have guests over."

Ron and Harry exchanged glances.

"Don't look at me, mate," Harry said. "James, Sirius, Albus, and Lily are all spending the weekend with Scorpius in the Swiss Alps… skiing."

Ron's expression darkened with the mention of the Malfoy family.

"Give it a rest, mate," Harry sighed. "They get along just fine."

Ron reddened a little, but he ended with a sigh. "I know, I know, it's just… Malfoy, Harry."

"You shouldn't just a book by its spine," Rose said.

"Shouldn't that be cover, Rose?" Harry asked.

"No," Rose said, scrunching up her face. "If someone sees the spine is tattered and damaged, they could think it comes from an abusive home, but that's not always true. Sometimes a well loved book can still have a tattered spine. Maybe the book was bought from some person who didn't care for it. Maybe the new owners love it very much!"

Harry blinked at Rose and then stared at Ron, who shrugged.

Hermione smiled in the firelight, making no comment. She leaned into Severus' body, and the ebony centaur whickered softly, pressing his face into her hair as his arm wrapped around her withers and scritched the base of her mane.

"'mione, help me out, will ya?" Ron moaned. "It's 'judge a book by its cover,' right?"

Hermione's eyes were half closed as she enjoyed Severus' touch. "Hrm? Well, yes, that is the usual phrase."

"See!" Ron said. "I'm not a total idiot!"

Severus shot him a look that roughly translated to "you're still an idiot."

Rose made a pouting face that made it look like she was going to cry at any moment.

"That doesn't mean you reasoning was flawed, Rose," Hermione said with a soft whicker, and Rose immediately perked up. "May I lean on you too, Auntie Hermione?"

Hermione arched a brow. "I suppose."

"We're going to both need a shower thanks to the foals," Severus sighed into her ear, relapsing into the centaur way of calling all the young "foals."

Hermione smiled at him. "I want one."

Severus went still. "A shower or foals."

"Yes," Hermione said with a warm grin.

Severus swallowed hard. He turned his face to look into the fire, refusing to look her in the face lest he see something there that unravelled him completely. As she leaned into him, however, he relaxed, closing his eyes as he enjoyed the feel of her near and the small bit of peace of mixed company.

"The meat is done," Firenze announced, regaining his feet. "Help me carry this, my brother?" he asked Severus.

"Of course," Severus replied, hoisting himself off the ground and holding out his hand to help heave Hermione up onto all four legs.

Severus grabbed the other end of the spit, and he and Firenze walked the spitted haunch of venison towards the Burrow.

The children moaned at being moved, but Briarfoot got up quickly. She pulled the canvas bucket over and dumped water on the embers and then kicked dirt over the damp coals. She danced over the site with her feet, stomping it flat and replaced the grass plug over the indentation they had dug the fire pit out of the ground.

"I can't even tell we had a fire there!" Rose said excitedly. "That's amazing."

Briarfoot shrugged, looking somewhat baffled. As the other children ran down the hill back towards the Burrow, she tucked herself between Hermione's legs, nickering for comfort.

Hermione smiled at her, rubbing her withers. "You ok, Briarfoot?"

The filly nickered and rubbed up against her happily, clingy, but happy.

Hermione began the walk down the hill, smiling to herself as the young filly darted between her legs and then pressing up against her body as she walked. She'd touch her back for reassurance, dart off to chase something, then dart back to touch Hermione like a base of operations.

Hermione caught up with Firenze and Severus, who were holding the venison spit between them. They eyed the Burrow's very human-sized door with arched eyebrows.

"Ron and I will get that, sorry," Harry said, taking one end. "Come on Ron!" Harry waved his wand, expanding the door of the Burrow to accommodate the centaurs' bodies. The two wizards lugged the spit in as they carried the other cooked goods from the fire.

Giggling children can running from around the house, covered in even more mud than before.

Severus rolled his eyes as he pulled out his wand and cleaned the caked mud off their fur and hooves as to not trek it into the house. Both of them knew the explosion that would be Molly Weasley if she had muddy footprints leading across her treasured rugs.

Firenze bowed his head to look in the slightly enlarged door. "I'm not sure we will fit in the hallway, even if we fit through the door," he said with raised brows.

The children trampled their way into the door, tracking in mud and weeds, and even though they took off their shoes at the door, they continued to track their way across the clean wooden floors and carpets.

"Come on, Briar!" Rose called

Briarfoot took a tentative step forward, her smaller stature fitting through the door much more easily. She looked back at Hermione, Firenze, and Severus with a nervous whicker.

Molly appeared at the end of the hallway, radiating fury. She stared at the muddy prints that were being tracked across her floor. "Rose Weasley! What in Merlin's name do you think you're doing!" she screeched. "What did you do to that door?"

Molly whipped out her wand and fixed her front door, shrinking it down to normal, causing Briarfoot to squeal in surprise as it closed around her rump. The young filly darted back out the door with all haste, half in surprise from the shrinking door and half in terror of the witch that was Molly Weasley.

"What do you think you're doing, tracking mud into this house like some filthy animal?" Molly screeched. Her body was shaking as she cleaned most of the caked mud off the children with her wand. "March up those stairs and take a shower. I will not have you traipsing around this house like an animal in a barn to doesn't know any better than to stand in their own waste! Move!"

"But—!" Rose started to protest.

"GET MOVING!" Molly ordered. She cast an idle glance out the door to see horse legs outside the door.

"Rose Weasley, if you let the neighbour's horses out of the paddock and rode them here, I will tan your hide—!"

"Nana, no!" Rose protested. "Those aren't horses! Its—"

"Oh, I suppose they just look like horses and the hooves are illusionary? I will deal with you later, Rose. Wash up and get ready for dinner! Make sure your friends clean up too!"

"But Na—" Rose cried, her voice turning into sobs.

Rose's and her friend's cries were cut off by a sharp crack of Disapparation.

"Nonononono!" Rose wailed, running down the hall and out the door. "Auntie Hermione! Professors! NO!"

By this time, Ron and Lavender were running up to see what all the fuss was about, and Harry was rushing up behind him with a confused look on his face.

"What happened?" Harry asked, still carrying a casserole dish. "Where's Hermione and—"

Rose bawled, tears streaming down her cheeks. Her other friends were whimpered in the corner of the hallway, unsure what to do.

Ron rushed out into the reeds. "Hermione?"

Harry frowned. "I don't understand, they were right behind us. Hermione! Professor Snape? Firenze!" he called. He looked down to the hoofprints around the front porch where the tracks let off a little ways and then disappeared completely into thin air.

"Don't be worrying about the neighbor's horses, Harry," Molly said angrily as she marched up behind them. "I've warned Rose about that time and time again. "I'll find them after dinner and take them back to our neighbor's farm."

"Horses?" Harry said slowly as realisation dawned. "Oh, no, tell me you didn't call them horses!"

"Of course I called them horses. That's what they are!" Molly said. "What you want me to call them? Beasts?"

"No, no that would have been worse!" Ron said, catching what was going on.

"What is going on here?" Molly yelled, frustrated.

"There, there, now," Lavender was comforting Rose, trying to get her to stop crying so hard that she was hiccuping.

"I hate you!" Rose said spitefully as tears rolled down her cheeks. She grabbed her friend's wrists in her hands and dragged them up the stairs towards the bathrooms.

"What the hell is going on here?" Molly seethed.

"Mum," Ron said. "Remember how I said Hermione, Lavender, and I had a bit of a misunderstanding when Rose told us much preferred Hermione as a centaur?"

"What about that silly claptrap from the Daily Prophet?" Molly grunted. "We all know that paper is rubbish!"

Ron flushed. "It wasn't claptrap, mum. She and… Snape were both transformed into centaur trying to help Neville with curing his parents."

Harry could almost see the gears turning in Molly Weasley's head.

"I saw… horse legs outside the door. There were horses outside the house!" she muttered to herself. Suddenly, the magnitude of what she had blurted to the kids settled in. "No! I didn't mean… I didn't realise…" Molly wrung her hands together.

Molly sat on the porch seat, rocking herself. "Merlin, what have I done?"

Molly put her head in her hands and groaned.

-o-o-o-o-o-

 **A/N:** Oh dear. Might be worse than what Neville said to Hermione


	6. Chapter 6 Hoof in Mouth Disease

**A/N:** One Step's next chapter is currently waiting on my Beta's magic and will be posted when she is done.

 _Alas, I am posting without supervision. All errors found within are definitely all my own._

 **Heart of the Herd**

 **Chapter 6: Hoof in Mouth Disease**

Briarfoot was attached to Hermione like she was her dam, and she was not under any circumstances going to let go. That was the only truth Severus was certain of at that given moment. Despite her being social with so many students at Hogwarts, the stress of meeting Molly Weasley had been disastrous. When Harry had invited them all to the Burrow for dinner, they had presumed that the wizard had informed the Weasley matriarch of their special considerations. They had obviously been wrong.

To top it off, Hermione and Severus discovered something that all young foals did when they were very stressed out: suckle for milk. To add even more embarrassment, since Briar was a born and raised centaur, she had no qualms about latching onto a "herd mare" and making herself feel better. Hermione's eyes were very, very wide, and her body was quivering in something akin to panic as the young foal latched onto the teats under her equine body.

"Severus!" she hissed into his ear in a panic. "I'm lactating!"

Severus' eyes were equally panicked. "What?"

"L-A-C-T-A-T-I-N-G," she spelled with her mouth and pointed down below herself as if the vision of Briarfoot feeding herself from under Hermione wasn't explicit enough.

Severus paled and looked completely flabbergasted.

Humans, as they both knew, were not normally the lactating without a baby kind of creature. Centaurs, however, seemed to have a very herd-centric physiology. If you were a healthy mare and there were foals about, your body adapted accordingly… even if you didn't have the foals yourself.

Severus did the only thing he could think of and pulled Hermione's panicked body closer to his, and the moment she snuggled into his chest, she seemed to calm. He, too, felt much better, soothing himself by rubbing the base of her mane and running his hands through her hair.

Firenze looked somewhat embarrassed for Hermione's sake. "I'm sorry, sister. I didn't think… I wasn't…" He sighed, facepalming. "I didn't think that was going to happen to you quite so… soon. You aren't even around other mares to… oh buggar."

Hermione buried her face into Severus' chest and clutched his teaching robes like a sloth to a tree.

Severus glowered at Firenze.

Firenze flushed, looking quite flustered. "I'm sorry," he mouthed, his face turning red. "So sorry!"

Severus did a gesture behind Hermione's back. It wasn't polite in eight of ten social circles.

After a few minutes of awkward nursing, at least on the newly adult centaurs' part, Briar peaked out from under Hermione's body and felt safe enough to dart between Firenze's legs and whicker softly. Her eyes were bright, and her body was no longer quivering.

Foals, Severus was beginning to understand, relapsed back into a more equine body language and vocal language when they were stressed, and words would come later after all the strain that had plagued the young filly worked its way out of her system. Apparently, weaning didn't quite work the same in centaurs as they did in humans or even horses, for that matter. Then again, it seemed to be severely stress related past a certain point, because never had Briarhoof been compulsed to do so before that point. She was, however, the smallest of the Hogwarts' centaur. Did that even matter?

He would have to ask Firenze about it in more details after he was done hexing him into the next century for embarrassing his ma—what the hell was his brain thinking?!

Hermione, still quite flustered, eased down to the comfortable cushions, allowing her equine body to fold itself properly underneath her. Severus settled beside her, keeping his body pressed against hers. His arms automatically pulled her human torso close, and Hermione snuggled into him. She took comfort from him in a way that gave him a strange amount of comfort as well.

They leaned into the pile of pillows that they had formed in just the right way to support their human torsos as their equine lower halves folded up just so. Severus leaned back against the pillows and pulled Hermione to him, spooning against her back with a soft whicker.

Briarfoot curled up between Hermione's legs, snuggling into her body, and Firenze let himself down slowly, easing up next to them with soft huff of air. The ceiling shimmered, and suddenly the night sky was above them, much like it was in the Great Hall, only the soft breezes from outside magically blew within. The added breeze calmed Hermione and Severus, and they both relaxed drowsily. Within a few minutes, they were asleep, the drama at the Burrow forgotten. Whatever strain the young filly had would wait for the morning, and hopefully, whatever aftershock from Hurricane Molly could be staved off then.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Severus woke in the early morning as he was prone to do. Before, it had been insomnia, usually caused by the aftereffects of being tortured by a Dark Lord. More recently, it was just habit. Waking in the early morning was peaceful. Even the most rebellious of students tended to sleep in the early morning. It was late at night when all the mischief tended to happen.

Today, however, he felt strangely at peace. Firenze had already gone out early, perhaps to take Briarfoot back to mingle amongst her peers or to visit with the main herd. It left him alone with Hermione, and there was a certain peace in that he couldn't deny.

Hermione's hair had an attractive scent to it, and as he ran his hand down her back and along her increasingly attractive dorsal stripe, his body shuddered with desire. Hermione, even half asleep, stirred against his touch, pressing her body closer to his with instinctive mutual desire.

As much as he tried to fight it, he couldn't deny that his body was perfectly happy with the set of circumstances he was placed in, and apparently, Hermione wasn't fighting it in the slightest. She pressed her back against his chest with a soft croon, and she flicked her tail to the side in invitation.

"Hermione," he whispered, his hands hesitating over the smoothness of her skin. He pressed his nose into the depths of her mane. "Is this what you truly want?"

Hermione placed her hands on his, guiding them over her body, some places familiar to the human aspect and some quite new. "Don't stop, Severus," she whispered. "Please."

A part of Severus knew if he let himself go to this compulsion there would be no going back. His growing hunger for her would not something he could deny. If she changed her mind and denied him, it would break him. He could never see her as just a friend or a colleague. His breath caught in his throat, and he felt every touch of their skin upon his.

Desire stirred in lower places in a manner far harder to ignore than ever his human anatomy had been. A hundred horse similes came to mind and he flushed scarlet in half embarrassment and half desire. Magorian's amused comment about mutual acrobatics became all the more clear. Severus didn't consider himself a master in anything resembling lovemaking as his profession wasn't exactly conducive to such things.

Death Eaters tended to not care where they stuck their various parts, and if he had used Bellatrix as a role model, well, he probably would have died of some horrible sexually-transmitted disease. He was pretty sure that the reason Rudolphus and the Dark Lord had a hands-off policy in regards to Bellatrix was that she couldn't keep her hands to herself. The insanity had insured that. Whatever part of her brain that did self control had been irrevocably damaged. She had thrown herself at everyone in various states of her delirium, remembering nothing, and then accusing whoever brought it up as a liar, torturing them with Cruciatus if they dared to disagree. Needless to say, those that took her up on it never spoke of it, and those that didn't gave her a very wide berth.

Severus had once had a handful of lovers, but they had not been emotional attachments. Separation of mind and body had been involved, and they had met fleetingly, indulged their bodies' combined desires, and then left. What he felt now, however, was something far different. He _felt_ desire. He felt… need. He wanted her more than he wanted anything in his life, and it terrified him.

He gently nibbled behind Hermione's pointed equine ears, and Hermione came undone. She let out a soft equine moan, and Severus felt every fibre of his being respond to that sound as though it were for him alone, and perhaps it was. His mind was a flurry of activity, and his hands roamed further across her human skin and equine fur. His hands roamed lower, brushing against her barrelled sides.

Hermione let out a soft squeal, and her tail flicked to the side again, this time she positioned herself in a very undeniable invitation position, and she leaned into him with a shudder. "Severus," she whispered, her voice ragged. "Please."

Severus tilted his head back, his mouth open as he tasted the air with his new senses. She was ready. She wanted him. He could smell it… taste it on the roof of his mouth as his lips pulled back from his teeth in flehmen response. A hundred chemical signals told him everything he really needed to know. He wasn't forcing her. She wasn't being coerced. She wanted him. Why then, was he hesitating?

"I want you," he whispered raggedly, his breath tickling her neck. "I need you."

"I'm yours," Hermione replied. "Please, Severus. I want you."

Third confirmation hit Severus like a brick to the face, and he could no longer keep lying to himself. His need to protect her from himself transformed into a need to love her both in mind and body. There was a crack in his emotional dam, and more and more formed until it broke. He wrapped his arms around her human torso as he positioned his body over her back and let nature take its course at last.

Centaurs, he found out, had excellent stamina. Over a day later, he confessed, at least to himself, that centaurs had supreme stamina, and he wasn't complaining in the slightest. Nor, did it seem, was Hermione.

He made a mental note to thank Neville Longbottom if they ever managed to leave their private chambers.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Briarfoot and Meadowrun whickered happy greetings and immediately attached themselves to Hermione and Severus as they carried picnic baskets out onto the green. Firenze and Flint cantered up from the forest carrying a haunch of venison between them.

Hermione smiled and hugged them all, nickering a happy greeting. After the failed cookout that was the past weekend at the Burrow, Hermione didn't want the foals to think that was standard, and Firenze had agreed. None of the adults had truly believed that Molly Weasley had intended to insult them, but the slander had hurt Briarfoot, who didn't understand that Molly had seen horse legs and assumed. Humans, they explained to her, tended to assume horse legs were attached to horses. Centaur did not normally come out of the forests to visit places their forest did not connect.

Briar had, after much placating to get her nerves calmed and a good nurse or two from Hermione, settled down and listened to reason. She had, after a time, understood the misunderstanding after the initial knee-jerk reaction, that the Weasley Matriarch hadn't been informed of their "special" guests. Rose hadn't thought it important. A friend was a friend, after all. Harry and Ron figured Molly knew since she read the Prophet, and the centaur figured their figures standing out in the open by the fire had been observed by the people in the Burrow. Assumptions had been made, and Briar had paid the price in stress. Hermione, however, ever one to take care of the young, wanted to make up for it.

She never did anything small.

As soon as the venison haunch was on the spit and cooking, house-elves began to appear with piles of blankets and baskets of food. Minerva came in lead, bringing the fellow professors and the students to join them on the green. Flitwick had loosed a bunch of charmed balls to chase, Neville brought a few baskets of fruits harvested from the greenhouse, Sinistra brought floating pastries that formed into constellations, Vector brought crackers jumped around on the plate and formed equations, and Lupin brought edible history books.

"Remus," Hermione beamed at the werewolf. "You have them eating history? You bad wolf."

Remus smiled widely. The post-war had treated him well. He looked far more healthy, and the people had seemed to realise there were both bad and good werewolves just as there were bad and good people. Remus had proven himself the hero worthy of an Order of Merlin, and he and Tonks had a quiet happy life. He had taken over as History of Magic Professor, and students loved him in that as much as they had loved him in DADA. Even more happily, Remus and Severus had settled into a peaceful coexistence, partly due to Hermione's wrangling and partly due to the post-war aftermath.

Hermione had said it was due to Teddy, who had never failed to prove to everyone that his parents were the best parents in the world. Teddy had even decided to take lessons to become an Animagus on top of being his natural Metamorphmagus. He had wanted to keep his father company on full moons, and he succeeded. Neither Hermione, Minerva, nor Severus were surprised when Teddy transformed into a wolf. With tears in her eyes, Tonks had come to Hermione and begged to be taught how to be an Animagus as well. She hadn't realised it was possible. Oddly it had been Severus that noted that truly caring for another had the power to make the impossible possible.

Ever since Teddy and Tonks had joined him on every full moon's change, Remus' health had become better. He showed no interest in other humans when he turned, only his family interested him, and when the old Black mongrel came to visit, the pair chased each other over the moors like pups again. And while the older werewolf was starting to slow down in his progressive age, Poppy had said that his health hadn't been better. He was, perhaps, the oldest living werewolf, defying the old belief that being a werewolf cut the lifespan in half.

Hermione wholeheartedly believed that it was because Remus and Sirius had survived the war that Harry had turned out as well as he did. When Sirius had walked out of the dust of the final battle with Remus and Tonks, everyone wanted to know how Sirius had survived. Harry, especially, had seen Sirius fall through the Veil, and Remus had been heartbroken for over a year. Whether by fate or intention, the sky had opened up over the ramparts of Hogwarts, and it rained wizards and witches that had "fallen through the Veil." It had been because of that timely save that little damage actually affected Hogwarts. Many of those who had fallen out of the sky had been "victims" of the first war, and joining the second hadn't taken much thought.

After Voldemort had been defeated, the reformed Ministry examined the old gateway and realised that Voldemort had changed it into a prison of his own design. Hundreds and thousands of witches and wizards that had raised their voices against him from the start had suffered "accidents." Many of them had been cast into the Gateway, seemingly to their death. Once the phenomena had been confirmed, the Ministry had released the remaining people trapped within and dismantled the gate, ensuring no others would be condemned to a fate of perpetual limbo.

Harry, though not reunited with his parents, had been reunited with the two wizards that were as a close as family, and the conflicted, somewhat tortured, and abused boy finally grew up, became an Auror, and cherished every gift he had been given. Unlike some who might have been swallowed up in the fame, Harry remained the humble person he had always been. There were a few times when he had puffed out his chest and strutted, but Hermione had always been quick to smack him upside the head with whatever reading material she had been holding. Some things never changed.

And as Hermione stared into Remus' warm eyes, she knew that Harry, Remus, Sirius, and so many others had gained in the end of the Second Wizarding War. All of them cherished each other. Teddy had his parents. Harry had his adopted family and friends, and so many others had many things to be thankful for. Fred had fallen over four stories during the battle and a flying Death Eater had broken his fall and hadn't survived the experience. Fred, limping out of the battle with a injured leg, had been tackled by his family. Percy, who had long been on the wrong side of the fight, burst into tears, held onto Fred, and wept. Since then, he'd been at every family gathering, and Hermione knew things could have been far, far worse.

All thoughts the past, however, went flying out the window as Remus enfolded her in a warm hug. Her transformation hadn't affected their relationship in the slightest. He was still the warm and unjudging wizard he had always been.

"Hermione," he said as he pulled away, squeezing her shoulders with his hands. "You're looking good. Happy."

Hermione flushed slightly. "Thank you, Remus."

Remus' eyes had a sparkle to them. "You deserve happiness, Hermione," he said softly so none of the students could hear, "and so does he."

Remus smiled as Severus' ears pinned back on his head, having heard everything thanks to his improved hearing. "Now you know what it's like, Severus," Remus chuckled in a low whisper, "hearing everything that people say about you from across a crowded room."

Severus snorted, but used that moment to make sure every child who wanted one had a kickboard for the lake. Centaurs were, oddly enough, extremely buoyant. Briarfoot, Meadowrun, and Flint were acting like living buoys on the lake, and the other children were paddling around them and clinging to them in between water fights. Firenze was up to his belly in the lake watching the children play around the foals, and his ears were flicking in his amusement.

Minerva was helping children make caramel apples, and it didn't take long for certain four legged students to be almost magnetically attracted to the sweet apple scents coming from her cauldron. Some of the children complained that they centaur buoys were wandering off, but Firenze assured them that they would return, eventually.

Meadowrun pranced away with three caramel apples, with Flint and Briarfoot chasing after her, complaining that she was being an apple hog. The chase turned into a game, and soon many children were playing caramel apple keep-away. Minerva simply shook her head and distributed more apples.

Neville, who still hadn't quite recovered from his distasteful outburst over the flowers, avoided eye contact, and Hermione sighed that he had still not attempted to approach or even apologise. All attempts on her part to invite him over for tea and discussion had been met with deaf ears. She figured he was embarrassed and maybe even ashamed, but it all came down to Hermione couldn't help what she had been turned into, and it wasn't _her_ outburst that had caused the problem. It was up to Neville to make the move, and he was dragging his feet.

Hagrid joined the picnic later in the night, stating he had some emergency with his animals happen. Severus and Minerva instantly looked suspicious. Anytime Hagrid had "something come up" it had ended up badly for someone. It was usually Hagrid and some species of something or another that he had been secretly trying to hatch, raise, smuggle, or introduce into the Dark Forest.

The last thing he had "rescued" had been a type of death adder that was specifically dangerous to centaur. Myth held it responsible for Eurydice's death in the legends of Orpheus and the Underworld. Hagrid had been in tears for months, saying the adders hadn't done anything to anyone and "couldn't hurt a fly." He, of course, didn't mention that he'd been bitten countless times and was immune to the venom, while one bite could have killed a rampaging pachyderm. Harry had been on the team that had to route out and dispose of the adders. Some of them were captured and sent back to Greece before Greece sent special permission to eradicate them from the Dark Forest. They sent back an official warning saying the adder was notoriously hard to eradicate after establishing themselves, and the best method to keep them from killing off every indigenous species was, unfortunately, obliteration. The adder had been, until someone had smuggled them off, limited to a small island off the coast of Greece. They had never touched inland, and thus, they lived without breaking the ecosystem of other areas. People had been the ones to smuggle them off, and people like Hagrid had been ignorant enough to "set them free" as a good deed. Two sailing ships had been killed by a rampaging adder, having unknowingly smuggled the snakes in their cargo bay, and a patch of forest in Spain had been burned to the ground to prevent the spread of the serpents to other areas. Fire and water were their only true weakness. They hated water and they combusted in fire.

Hermione, and she confessed to it often, had a soft spot for Hagrid. He had been a warm part of her childhood when so many others had judged her for her blood, her intelligence, her swottiness, or everything inbetween. She couldn't, however, ignore the danger he brought to Hogwarts, and there were times when she, Minerva, and Severus all cursed the clause Dumbledore had written in Hagrid's contract that kept anyone from firing him as long as he took care of the thestral and hippogriff herds for the school. Umbridge had been the cause of that particular clause, and at the time, no one had questioned it in favour of throwing in a monkey wrench to Umbridge's attempt to "fire everyone."

Now that Hermione was grown up, Hagrid tended to clam up when talking about his animals, almost as if he knew that he couldn't get away with things like he used to. Still, Minerva had sent both Hermione and Severus to check on Hagrid a few times in their stealthier Animagus forms. Most of the time it was a false alarm, but, every so often, Hermione and Severus would come back with reports that Hagrid was trying to breed things that should never have been allowed to breed. What they were, exactly, was unknown, but Minerva agreed that things with that many legs, tails, and point venomous fangs were not "cute" or "harmless" as young, let alone grown up. It had been pure dumb luck that no one had been killed, harmed, or maimed by Hagrid's projects over the years, and even Harry confessed he had no idea how to get Hagrid to listen to reason.

Sinistra led a star watch as the sunset, and Firenze assisted by telling the stories of star movements and how the centaurs read the planets and stars together. Sinistra seemed to approve of Firenze far more than she did of Trelawney, but whether that was because they shared a value in the stars or she simply loathed Trelawney like most others did was yet to be proven.

By the time the children were half asleep on top of each other, the professors were well on their way to wrangle them back to their dormitories. Minerva patted Hermione on the shoulder and smiled before returning to Hogwarts. All had gone well, and it had been a good end to a week.

When Hermione excused herself to do the evening rounds, the worn out foals were snuggled up against a baffled Severus who looked like he'd just been hugged by a talking alligator. "What are the chances they sleep in their own dorms tonight?" Hermione asked Severus as she touched the side of his cheek with her fingers.

Severus shook his head. "With or without an Incarcerous spell and a prybar?" He pressed his hand over hers and looked into her eyes with a growing softness.

Hermione snickered. "I may or may not have learned a trick from the herd mares," she said with a wink.

Severus arched a brow.

Hermione gave a piercing whinny, shaking her mane as she flipped her tail back and forth. Immediately, the three foals woke from their doze and attended her side. "Come, time to go back to your dorms, children," she whickered, and the trio of foals followed her dutifully down the corridors.

Severus felt his eyebrows raising into his hair.

"Foals always listen to the lead mare," Firenze chuckled as he came down the hallway. "Here amongst Hogwarts, that mare is Hermione."

Severus scratched his head.

Firenze smiled. "It will be good practice for you, having foals underfoot," he palomino centaur chuckled, "especially when you have a few of your own."

Severus froze. "Few?"

Firenze looked at him strangely. "Do you plan on stopping at one?"

Severus flushed crimson, his ears pinned against his head.

Firenze smiled. "Peace, brother. In time you you will understand that centaur celebrate all births amongst the herd as much as the pairings that make them possible. What you have is to be celebrated. Is this not so amongst humans? To find someone who completes you—to find one who drives you to protect and cherish?"

Severus furrowed his brows, but he nodded in affirmative.

Firenze gave an almost sad smile. "Perhaps, one day, I shall be so lucky," he said as he walked into their shared quarters.

Severus touched Firenze on the withers. "You will," Severus said almost a whisper.

Firenze looked upward, watching the stars float across the magical ceiling. "I hope you are right, brother."

Severus looked up and shared the sky with his centaur brother. "For once, Firenze. I know it."

Firenze gave Severus a warm smile and nodded silently. "Then I shall believe you, brother."

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

"Thank you, Mr and Mrs Granger," Minerva said with a slight bow of her head. "I appreciate you coming to us when getting here is not exactly… easy."

The elder Grangers shook their heads. "It's quite unexpected to see such a grand place," Mr Granger said as he looked out over the greens and the Black Lake. "Our daughter often wrote about it and told us of such things when she came back on holiday. The tales don't do this place justice."

Minerva smiled. "There have been many tales," the Headmistress replied. "Some are even true."

Mrs Granger smiled.

Minerva looked grim. "As I understand it, you were sent something that troubles you? I can assure you that your daughter has not suffered any injury recently."

Mr and Mrs Granger exchanged glances. "We were sent this in the mail."

"By owl?" Minerva asked.

Mr Granger shook his head. "It was left on our doorstep, addressed to us. We thought Hermione had left it."

"Something horrible has happened to her!" Mrs Granger said. "She's been… changed into something unnatural!"

Minerva hesitated as her hand reached for the parcel. She slowly opened the package and frowned. "Do you know who sent these?

The Grangers shook their head. "It came with this note saying that someone had been conducting unauthorised experiments on our daughter and that she was forced to hide out here at this school. They sent pictures. Horrible pictures."

Minerva looked through the parcel and the bundle of photographs piled within. "I fear, Mr and Mrs Granger, that you have been… misinformed."

"Oh, thank God," Mrs Granger sighed with relief. "I was so worried that she's been turned into a monster!"

Minerva, had she had her cat ears, would have flattened them across her skull. She swallowed hard. "I fear that whoever sent you this only told you a… partial truth, Mr and Mrs Granger. Hermione has had to go go through some personal changes recently, but it was done by some mad experiment, I can guarantee you that."

"What kind of changes?" Mr Granger asked, frowning. "Surely it was nothing she couldn't tell us! We're her parents, for God's sakes."

"It was my fault," a male's voice said from the back of the room. Neville came in slowly from the door. "What happened was because of me."

"You're that Neville Longbottom, yes?" Mr Granger said. "I remember you from the photographs Hermione brought home."

Minerva gestured Neville in.

"What happened wasn't planned, Mr and Mrs Granger," Neville said with difficulty. "I was reasearching a cure for my parent's… dementia, I believe is what you call it. I work with herbs and plants you see."

"What does this have to do with Hermione?"

"Let him speak, dear."

Neville squared his shoulders. "There is a rare magical flower that blooms only in certain places. Sacred places. Hidden places. I dug one up and brought it back to study it. I managed to get them to reproduce, but never to bloom. I asked Hermione to look at it for me. Analyse it for healing properties. My hope was to cure my parents because they haven't been… right in the head in over thirty years."

Mrs Granger looked appalled, and Mr Granger's expression softened somewhat.

"Something happened when I gave her the flower. She and another professor was examining it, and the flower bloomed. We'd never seen one bloom, you see. We had no idea what it could do," Neville explained. "The plant had some unforeseen side effects." Neville looked at the pile of photographs in the parcel. "Those are the side effects."

"You're saying," Mr Granger began, "that a plant… turned our daughter into a half horse."

"A centaur, Sir," Neville said, flinching. "Yes."

Both Mr and Mrs Granger turned a little green.

Mrs Granger looked about to cry. "How is this even… how could you… after all she's been through! After all we've been through! Why is this the first we've heard of it?"

Neville looked even more ashamed. "I fear that was my fault as well, Sir, Ma'am. I begged her to keep researching the effects, even in her own blood, in the case it would help my parents. Part of me figured if I kept her busy, the effects would wear off, and then she'd never have to face you. If she was angry at me, then she wouldn't worry so much. I never wanted her to suffer, you have to believe me."

"Does she know you're here? Telling us this?" Mr Granger asked.

"No, Sir, she doesn't," Neville said. "When I heard you were coming, I knew I had to be here to explain."

Mr Granger grasped Mrs Granger's hand. "I have something to ask of you then, Mr Longbottom, before I say something I will regret."

"Anything," Neville said. "Please don't blame Hermione for not contacting you sooner."

Mr Granger set his jaw. "I want to meet these parents of yours. I want to see what was so important that you felt that," he said pointing at the box of pictures, "was perfectly acceptable par for the course."

Neville looked confused at the analogy, but understood what Mr Granger really wanted. "I'll take you now, Mr and Mrs Granger." He cast a look to Minerva who gave him a grim nod.

Neville took in a breath and squared his shoulders. "Headmistress, may we use your floo?"

Minerva nodded grimly. "Of course."

Neville gestured toward the fireplace. "This way, please."

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

When Mr and Mrs Granger stepped out of the floo coming back from St Mungo's, their faces were pale and almost green.

"I thought…" Mrs Granger said. "That magical people didn't need science because they had cures for disease."

"I had no idea you had such suffering in the magical world," Mr Granger said with a squeeze of his wife's hand. "I see now that your world has its own set of problems and woes. We're sorry for your parents, Mr Longbottom. We truly are. I just wish… you hadn't taken our daughter away from us."

"I'm still here, mum, dad," Hermione said from the side of Minerva's desk. She set down the tea she was drinking. "I'm not dead."

Mrs Granger gasped and ran forward, stopping only inches away from her daughter. She looked like she wanted to hug her, but was unsure where to even start. Hermione towered over her now, her equine body set her many hands over where her human torso would have begun, and her mass alone had changed greatly.

Hermione, however, did the only thing she could, opening her hands to the embrace and pulling her mother to her with tears running down her face.

Her mother sobbed into her daughter's body, clinging to her as though she were a life raft. "Oh, honey," We already had to forget you once. I'm never, ever going to let it happen again."

Hermione trembled and bowed down on her front legs to put herself at a more appropriate human hugging height and crushed her mother to her breast. "I love you mum."

"You'll always be our daughter, you hear me?" Mrs Granger said stoutly. "We'd love you even if you came back with multiple heads."

"They told us the most drama would end after you stopped being a teenager," Mr. Granger said as he approached his transformed daughter. "Those books don't know anything, do they?"

Hermione let out a sob as her father joined the huddle, and the Granger family was reunited at last.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

"Mum, dad," Hermione said a little shyly. "This is Briarfoot, Meadowrun, and Flint. Briarfoot, Meadowrun, Flint, these are my parents: Mr and Mrs Granger."

"Pleased to meet you," the three foals chimed, bowing their front legs down.

"This is Firenze," Hermione said. "He teaches… the stories of the stars and planets, and this is Severus. He teaches Defence Against.."

"Dastardly Arts," Severus said, extending a pale hand.

Mr and Mrs Granger looked up into Severus' face and swallowed hard. Hermione smiled a little, know the effect Severus had on the typical person as a human, let alone a centaur standing at over seventeen some hands.

"Dastardly Arts," Mr Granger said. "Sounds like the stuff of war."

Severus seemed to contemplate that for a moment. "Indeed it is."

"Is it anything like Military Science?" Mr Granger asked.

"Quite a bit," Severus replied thoughtfully. "Planning for the most intelligent of foes and not being surprised when the enemy throws you imbeciles."

Mr Granger laughed genuinely. "I like you, Sev… Severus is it? You seem to have a fine head on your shoulders. As I've understood it, you too were changed with my daughter? You weren't born this way?"

"I was born this way!" Briarfoot said proudly. "Well, my dam says I was born all leg and no sense."

The other two foals giggled.

Briarfoot snorted. "Flint was born with two hooves in the water and two hooves fire. Meadowrun was born running. Everyone says her dam flirted with an Arabian centaur when she was young."

"Briar!" Firenze snorted. "Manners!"

Briar and the other two foals giggled.

"I was born this way," Flint and Meadowrun said together.

"As was I," Firenze said. "Many, many moons ago."

"He's ancient," Meadowrun mouthed to Mrs Granger.

Firenze ahemed.

The foals giggled and snuggled up to Hermione's body for reassurance, using her as a defence against Firenze's wrath.

Severus shook his head. "I was not born this way," he confessed. "Hermione and I have been… adapting together."

"It must he hard," Mrs Granger said. "Adapting."

Severus sighed. "It was unexpected, as you know, but, I have known Firenze for many years, and these miscreants have been under hoof for some time now. I have also been in touch with the herd long before this. It has helped."

The foals moved over to flomp on Severus, letting him know that they were comfortable with him as well.

Hermione chuckled at the migration.

Mr Granger seemed to think of something. "Not to make light of this situation, Hermione, but what happens with the effects wear off?"

The foals gained a panicked expression, their ears flicked back against their skulls. Flint clung to Firenze. Meadowrun clung to Severus, and Briarfoot dove between Hermione's legs and snuggled against her with a frightened whicker.

Hermione immediately touched Briarfoot on the head, soothing her mane and whickering softly. Hermione looked at her father as he sipped the tea she had given. "I'm afraid we don't know if it will, dad. There is a good chance that this is what I am."

Briar combed Hermione's legs with her hands nervously, chattering her teeth slightly in distress. The foals had become bonded to Hermione very quickly as a centaur, and the bond she had had with them as a human has been strong to begin with. What she had now, however, was something much stronger, and the very thought of losing Hermione as one of their herd was a terrifying as losing their dam or their sire. It was, perhaps, even more terrifying due to fact that if Hermione and Severus turned back their herd presence at Hogwarts would be down to Firenze, which was hardly a stable group with multiple stable adults.

Mr Granger seemed to realise he had distressed the "children" and frowned. "I am sorry. This is new to me… to us. There is much we do not know of the magical world, or what certain things mean to you. It is obvious you care of my daughter very much, yes?"

The foals nodded emphatically, nickering.

Mr Granger's expression softened, and Mrs Granger seemed more at ease. "I meant what I said before, Hermione. We lost you once to a war when no child should be expected to fight in one. We got you back. I have no intention of letting this get between us either. I do wonder why this plant, however, didn't turn Mr Longbottom into a centaur instead of you."

The foals made faces. "Professor Longbottom would make a horrible centaur."

Severus snorted. "And I'm so much better."

The foals looked at him curiously as if to say "well, yeah!" and "obviously."

Briarfoot gave a large yawn and covered it immediately.

"Someone should be getting back to the dormitories," Hermione said, not missing the tired yawn.

Briar shook her head adamantly, clinging to Hermione's mane with her hands.

Hermione looked like she was going to put her foot down, but with the pleading expressions on all the foals' faces, the centaur witch seemed to realise that this was a night of exceptions.

"Mum, dad, I set you up to sleep in that room there," she said, pointing to the nearby room that Hogwarts had graciously conjured for her without her even asking. I set you up with blankets. You're probably exhausted. We can talk more in the morning."

Mrs Granger looked relieved. "Bless you, dear," she said, shuffling off to the guest room.

Hermione folded her legs under herself and laid down, nickering an invitation. The three foals immediately attended her, laying down beside her in a shared huddle as they snuggled with each other and against her. The lull of the three foals against her seemed to remind her body that she was exhausted as well, and it wasn't long before she was dozing off with them.

Mr Granger stood with Severus and Firenze, watching the scene play out. "I never thought I'd say this, but she's a natural mother," he said softly, his face relaxing. "I guess, maybe, later I'll be looking at grandfoals."

Severus made a soft choking sound.

Firenze placed a hand on Mr Granger's shoulder. "She has a great heart, Mr Granger. I have no doubt she learnt that from her mother and father. What form she takes will never change that or who she is."

Mr Granger squared his shoulders. "We've always been proud of her. I just wish, sometimes, that I could parade her around and tell the neighbours 'Look! See how wonderful my daughter is. Look at all she can do!' you know?"

Firenze nodded.

Severus stared at the pile of foals on Hermione. "Do not worry, Mr Granger. There are far more than you think that know exactly how wonderful she is. She helped save the world, " Severus said with a small smile, "and that was only the beginning."

Mr Granger smiled. "My daughter… Saviour of the World. I can sleep well knowing that." He patted Firenze and Severus on the back and walked toward the guest room. "Goodnight," he said, shutting the door behind him.

Firenze smiled. "I see now where she gets her resilience in the face of panic." He stared at Severus a moment. "What troubles you, brother?"

Severus looked nervous. "That was, as they say, the first time I had to meet the parents."

Firenze's eyes widened. "You mean, they didn't know? Surely they could smell that you were mates?"

Severus flushed.

Firenze pursed his lips together. "Oh. Well, that went well!"

Severus gave him a look.

Firenze snorted. "Trust me, brother, it could have been worse. The first time I courted a young filly, her Sire chased me across the moors with his bow notched threatening that if I ever came near her again, he would castrate me with his hunting knife."

Severus paled. "How is that 'civilised,' Firenze?"

Firenze grinned. "It was civilised, brother. He at least gave me a head start!"

Severus made himself busy tucking himself up next to Hermione as he folded his legs underneath himself.

"My turn to do rounds," Firenze chuckled as he let himself out.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-

 **A/N:** I see the Grangers as being a very practical people. Emotional? Oh, yes. Prone to freak out when their daughter's pictures show up on their doorstep making her out to be a monster? Definitely. Totally unhinged? No. I think in my head, they would be the type to want to know why Neville was so blinded before making a decision as to ream him out or not. I see them as seeing St Mungo's Ward as a tragedy. I see anyone who can forgive their daughter for Oblivating them willing to make big steps to accept her new form. I also see Neville as the type to be willing to fess up to her parents long before he is able to fess up to HERMIONE.

As for the parcel, anyone have guesses who sent it? Heh. Heh. Heh.


	7. Insidious Mystery

A/N: So... sleepy. *thud*zzzzzz

Beta Love: Alas, fluffpanda is off celebrating Thanksgiving. All mistakes are mine!

 **Heart of the Herd**

 **Chapter 6: Insidious Mystery**

Hermione loosed the centaur foals into the forest, watching them canter excitedly back towards the main encampment. She held her mother's nervous hand as she led her through the centaur lands, and the groups of visiting herds came up to greet her, curious as to her and her nervous mother at her side.

"Hermione," Magorian greeted. "Good to see you."

Hermione bowed slightly. "Magorian, this is my mother. She's been visiting for a few days, and the foals were restless to reunite with their dams for the weekend."

Magorian smiled. "I hope they haven't been too clingy, Hermione. You are the only one one they will prefer to cling to at Hogwarts. I fear we stallions cannot provide that special something."

Hermione flushed, recalling her surprise realisation that she had been lactating.

"Hello, dam of Hermione," Magorian greeted, bowing down on his front legs briefly. "I am Magorian."

"Hello," Mrs Granger said with a shy smile. She held out her hand, unsure whether to bow or shake hands. "Please, call me Rosemary."

"Rosemary," Magorian smiled. "A name any filly or mare would be proud to carry. I am honoured to meet you, Rosemary."

"This is Stormchaser, leader of the herd north of us," Magorian said as a pure white stallion joined them. "This is Rogan, leader of the herd east of us." Magorian gestured to a red roan centaur who bowed as Magorian had done.

"This is Astra," the red roan introduced. "Matriarch of the Southern Herd. The stars guide her bow that she will never miss."

Astra flushed and smiled, her black and white grulla coat gave her a hazy stormcloud look. "Flatterer, Rogan," the elder centaur mare said with a smile. "You just want to give me foals."

Rogan grinned. "Happily mated, Astra, as you know."

Astra walked towards Hermione gracefully. "My dear, Hermione," she said softly. "Come and let me look upon you." The elder female ran her hands across Hermione's back and flanks, tracing her dorsal stripe. She clucked her tongue against her teeth. "You are strong and beautiful, dear Hermione. I see, now, why the foals flock to you like moths to the fire. I pray you teach them your wisdom and strength as well as the magic of world."

Hermione blushed and nodded to the elder mare.

Astra placed her hands upon Mrs Granger, looking into her eyes. Her nostrils flared and her ears flicked forward. "You must have many questions, Rosemary, mother of Hermione. Will you walk with me?"

Mrs Granger looked at Hermione with concern, but Hermione nodded to her.

"Yes, of course," Mrs Granger said nervously.

"Your daughter speaks of you highly, Rosemary," Astra said with a smile. "Allow me to answer your questions. Come, walk with me."

As Astra walked off with Mrs Granger, the stallions smiled after them.

"Do not worry, young Hermione," Rogan said with a smile. "Astra is one of the wisest of our seers. Of all the leaders of the herds, her eyes see the farthest forward, and her memories span the furthest back."

Hermione furrowed her brows.

Stormchaser smiled, knowing what was on her mind. "Astra's great, great, great, granddam was Galene, mate of Anatolius and first female centaur of our race. If anyone can bring peace to your dam's heart, Hermione, it is her."

Hermione wiped a tear from her eyes and smiled.

"The mares wish you to join them for a time, Hermione," Magorian a smile. "It has been a long time since our herds have mingled together. You shouldn't miss it."

Hermione smiled shyly. "I suppose I shouldn't keep them waiting."

Rogan, Stormchaser, and Magorian grinned at each other knowingly.

Hermione pinned her ears back. "Disconcerting," she said with nervous whicker and walked deeper into the encampment.

Magorian grinned from ear to ear as she passed, giving the other leaders a wink.

-o-o-o-o-o-

Hermione had been thoroughly poked, prodded, examined, clambored over by the gathering of mares and the young foals who couldn't resist their curiosity to check her out. Even the shiest foal seemed willing to come nestle up to Hermione's side as the mare's sat together in the sunny clearing.

The day's order or business was making bags and baskets for carrying things for the long journey home, and not even the foals were exempt from sizings. Save the very young, all the younglings were herded up for their fittings, and each seemed excited to have their own carrying bags to wear.

Some of the elder mares were tanning hides from the most recent hunts while others were making the colder weather clothing for when fall would creep into the winter.

"You will find that the cold doesn't bother you as much as you might think, Hermione," a beautiful dun mare named Marshberry said. As it gets colder, your coat will become thicker and spread from your mane down your back, covering more sensitive skin, but you'll find that you're more resilient that you might think. We rarely have to bundle up like you see humans doing in their awkward layers and thick coats."

Three young foals bickered with each other over Hermione's side, and one young filly had her legs draped over Hermione's withers in order to hug Hermione's human back. She nickered nervously, clinging to Hermione. One of the other mares stood and used her body to shove the two precocious foals out of the way, barring them from returning to the place where the conflict was going.

"Hey now," Cattail huffed, giving an equine snort. "There are plenty of sides in which to snuggle. If you cannot get along, then you will have to find your own dam."

The foals, chastened, tried to make their way back to Hermione, but Cattail was having none of it. She barred their way with her mass, arching her neck and flattening her ears. Finally the foals settled down next to an older mare named Cloud, whose dark grey body and distinctive white mane resembled her name.

Cattail snorted and settled next to Hermione as her own foal nickered and came up to examine Hermione. Hermione's cling-on seemed more relaxed and allowed the other to snuggle up next to her, and thus Hermione ended up with two foals draped across her back.

Cattail snickered and settled down, folding her legs under her. "Feeling a bit like a bit of a foal magnet, Hermione?"

Hermione made a face. "Somewhat."

"Healthy foals will always be beset with curiosity,"Marshberry said with an amused whicker. "By a year or two they will follow around the stallions and take more interest in things outside our circle, but when stressed, they will always come back to us. Herd females are safety, and I think that is one instinct we are born with that never leaves."

Another small foal, who tiny tail had barely any longer hair on it wedged himself against Hermione's side and began to nurse. Hermione's eyes went wide, her ears pinned back.

Aellai, one of the elder females from the neighboring herd, chuckled. "That one is Abrax," she said with a chuckle. "He's an equal opportunity reassurance feeder."

Hermione perked her ears and flushed.

"He's the youngest of our herd, having only survived ten moons, He was the only foal this year, unfortunately. As you know, our species is not blessed with constant fertility. There are some years where we are not so fortunate." Aellai smiled sadly. "We treasure them all as they come, but this meeting between herds is the first time Abrax has had peers, and he's not sure what to do with that."

The other mares nickered in agreement. "We have spoken with the leaders, and we have decided to meet up more regularly now that there is not war keeping our territories under threat. It will allow our foals to mingle, our stallions to show off their prowess in hunting, and give us company as we tend the young and results of the hunts."

"That sounds like a great plan," Hermione said with a nod.

Abrax pulled his head up from nursing and seemed to notice the two fillies nearby. He nickered at them curiously, and the two fillies nickered curiously back.

Hermione noticed that body language and equine vocalisations were the standard fare for the foals below a certain age. The mares had said that human speech came later even though they understood speech quite early. The centaur foal, unlike a human baby who was all floppy heads and barely the ability to see further than their nose, was built to run within an hour of being dropped. They stayed wobbly for the first hour but were often ready to frolic as soon as their coat was dry. Their human bodies were, unlike human babies, more proportioned to that of a three or four year old. Mentally, they were driven by instinct to stay around their dam and the herd females.

The mares said the foals usually nursed regularly for about a year, after which, the mares had them weaned onto softer foods. Younglings, however, when stressed, would nurse for many years after that until they learned to conquer their startle reflex. That, according to most of the mares, happened in the equivalent of human teen years.

"It is crucial for the young to be well attached to the mares well into their older years, unlike human children," an older red roan mare had said as she groomed her foal. "For centaurs, the bond between individual and the herd is what kept them alive in harder times. If a mare were to perish, other mares would care for the orphan. If the foal was bound only to their dam, they would not suckle, and they would starve. This bond must be strong until the youngling is able to be an adult, because if you are fleeing danger, survival comes from being able to trust the herd even when you cannot see your dam, though the bond between a dam and her foal are always strong."

Hermione's induction into the herd "mare circle" was setting her at ease. She did not feel alone, and unlike some of the strange looks she received from her human contacts, the centaurs were more than happy to welcome another mare into their ranks. The method in which she was changed was treated with a sort of reverence that was instilled into their culture. The flowers, they all seemed to believe, were not capable of making mistakes. She and Severus were, as far as they were concerned, meant to be.

"Your stallion has such well formed flanks," one young mare said, winking at Hermione. "You should have heard the rest of us when we first saw him."

Hermione blushed profusely. It wasn't so much the talk of Severus' more comely assets that was embarrassing as much as she realised she wasn't alone in thinking he was more than attractive. The mares chuckled around her, nodding their heads. "A finely proportioned young stallion," one elder agreed. "A good thing all of us already have mates."

More nickering laughter went around the gathered mares. Hermione turned more red, but the mares all patted her gently.

"Magorian informed us that Severus would take time to accept a mating bond with you, Hermione," a mare named Elene said. "We are glad that he did not wait too long. We would have had unmated stallions trying to jump fences to get a look at you and your poor Severus would have been beside himself with conflicting instincts. We mares are more lucky in that our heads are more clear when it comes to balancing instinct and reason, perhaps because the need to protect the young is much stronger than a need to protect our mate. Stallions are hardwired to protect herd females from threats, and having random suitors showing up in the territory would likely drive him and the rest of the herd stallions mad with protective urges."

"Is it always so strong?" Hermione asked.

Marshberry nodded. "When a colt matures into a stallion, the protective instinct is very strong. In the early years of our people, mares were very rare. Galene, mate of Anatolius, was the first, and thanks to the blessing of the moonflower, our people realised how precious she was. She and every mare after her were protected fiercely, for they were the ultimate proof of love. Had there been no love, the flower would not have changed her and those like her, and our people would have eventually faded into Oblivion."

Hermione pondered the history, smiling.

"Mares were often so protected that many humans believed centaurs were only male," Elene chuckled. "They thought all centaurs came down from Mt. Pelion to descend upon the villages, get drunk, eat uncooked flesh, rape their women, and destroy their crops. To be fair, however, before the gift of Chiron, the humans were not incorrect."

Hermione winced. There had been a time when Hermione had counted on the centaur's high territoriality and seeming violence to "take care of Umbridge." Thanks to the war stirring in the background, the centaur had not been at their best, and Umbridge probably still had nightmares when she heard hoofbeats. It wasn't to say that Umbridge didn't deserve Azkaban for all of what she had done to people during the war, but Hermione knew that her act of counting on centaur violence to save Harry Potter had been an act that would not have been forgiven had it happened during peacetime. She had long confessed that sin to her centaur allies back when she was human. Magorian had placed a hand on her shoulder and said they were both guilty of making judgments of each other due to presumptions. Both of them, he had said, would learn of each other from the ground up starting at that moment, and they had. Thanks to their alliance, Hermione had ushered in a new age of acceptance between the centaur and the Wizarding World, and from that she had helped the Goblin Nation. From that, she had finally been able to put in place help for the house-elves, even though of all the groups, the house-elves cared the least about needing equality. The irony was not lost on her that her first driven quest for equality was a perpetual failure and embarrassment.

By the time Astra had returned with Hermione's mother, the elder Dentist seemed much more peaceful. When she saw Hermione covered in foals, her face grew warm with a smile rather than the strained combination of need for acceptance and desire to scream. Of all the people who deserved a good scream of circumstance, it was probably Mrs Granger. She had to give her child up to a magical world at the age of 11. She had been forced to leave her baby behind and take up a new identity in Australia. Then, she had the strain of being tracked down and told that she really wasn't Mrs Wilkins and her family history was a lie. Finally, as a capstone to the entire affair, just when things were starting to look normal, she had been forced into reconciling with her daughter being a mythical creature out of a Greek mythology book. It was a lot to take in, and somehow the elder centaur had managed to put peace back into Mrs Granger's mind. Hermione hadn't really seen that on her mother's face since before she was accepted into Hogwarts.

As if to punctuate the new situation, Mrs Granger had colts attached to her. They were tugging on her coat as they walked up. Two foals were clinging to Astra, as were expected, but two young colts were affixed to Mrs Granger and chattering on about all manner of exciting things that interested. They showed her things they had collected, each competing for Mrs Granger's attention.

For the first time, Hermione saw something in her mother's gaze and realised that her mother really missed interacting with the young. Her mum had never really said she wanted grandchildren, but Hermione knew from watching her mother interact with the two excited colts that Mrs Granger did. Even better, she seemed perfectly willing to interact with the centaur youth. It was more than Hermione could have hoped. Even if Hermione's transformation turned out to be temporary, her mother was going to be okay with the centaur. What was even better, Hermione saw her mum's eyes flash with life as another small group of curious foals came up to inspect her, touching her, tugging her to join their miniature herd, and sharing their collected leaves, bugs, and shiny baubles.

Astra's hand alighted on Hermione's shoulder. "There now, young Hermione," the elder centaur Seer said. "Is there peace upon your heart now that there is in your dams?"

Hermione felt a surge of emotion rising in her chest and she nodded back, one tear running down her nose.

Astra gave her a warm smile. "Come, walk with me," she nickered, "and we shall discuss some of the things you will need to worry about now that you are with foal."

Hermione's eyes bugged out of her head as her ears flattened against her head.

Astra looked at her with puzzlement and then seemed to realise something. "Well, my dear, better you know now and have us to turn to with questions than in the dead of winter when all of us are scattered to the winds."

Hermione was still frozen in place, gobsmacked.

Astra neighed a call, and all the foals perked up and attended her. "The fish are spawning, younglings, gather your nets. Show your dams how cunning you are."

Excited whickers went around as even the youngest foal soon had a fishing net in his hands. Centaurs were a people prepared at a moment's notice.

By the time they had made it down to the river together, the foals tore off into the river and set upon catching the spawning fish, careful to catch only the ones that were done spawning so that the next generation would not be harmed. The other mares instructed the younger foals how to tell the difference between the fish full of roe and those that were spent.

Now that the foals and other mares were sufficiently occupied, Astra let Hermione off a ways from the river, far enough away from earshot but close enough to watch the goings on in case something happened.

"Now it is your time for questions, my dear," Astra said with a knowing grin. "Do you wish to start with how to excite your mate and keep him guessing or how to prepare for a coming foal?"

Hermione blushed furiously. She could only see Molly Weasley sitting down with Ginny to discuss the birds and the hippogriffs and remember how red Ginny had turned when Molly had gotten down to the point of contraception charms, proper nutrition, and how to handle the monthly bleeds. Whether Molly had told Ginny how to "please her partner" was completely unknown, to which Hermione was grateful, but seeing how prolific the Weasley's were, Hermione could only assume that Weasley females were not oblivious to such things. It had been Ginny, after all, that had tried to give Hermione tips in her love life, which had Hermione running screaming into the library to stick her head into a book on Arithmancy.

By the time the banks were filled with baskets of fish, Hermione's head was full of centaur knowledge from the female side of the species. Her brain, as always, soaked it up like a sponge, but Hermione know it would take a while for her to process it all. Astra gave her a knowing look. "I am sure the stallions are giving your Severus the same conversation, Hermione. They are always eager to exchange knowledge on many things."

Hermione snorted, making a half nicker. She could clearly see Severus' highly embarrassed face in her mind's eye. Suddenly her eyes went very wide. Her mother had spent the day with Astra and the mares… where was her father?

"Your father is with the other stallions of course," Astra answered her mental question with unnerving accuracy, "probably discussing the planets and stars that were in the sky the day you were conceived."

Hermione sputtered. Mr Granger, dentist, was hanging around with a bunch of stallions discussing planets and stars and other… stallion concerns. Merlin's beard—!

Out of the frying into the fire seemed to be the trend with centaurs.

Hermione wondered if she could ever look her father in the face again.

Better yet, she wondered if he could ever look her in the face again.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-

After dumping a basket of smoked fish in the Headmistress' Office and making Minerva McGonagall the happiest cat Animagus on the planet, Hermione and Severus had seen Mr and Mrs Granger home through the Floo Network. Both parents seemed far more at ease after the visit, and they promised if Hermione and Severus wished to visit all they had to do was "send one of those flying birds with a message" and they would clear out the garden for them to Apparate in.

Hermione seemed utterly relieved that the situation hadn't gone pear-shaped, and after seeing her father clap Severus over the withers (since his shoulder was a little too high for such things), she let out the breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding.

Firenze had managed to pry the foals off Hermione for the night, and the disappointed whickers and sad sounds they made practically made Hermione gallop after them, had Severus not been there to yank her back by the tail.

"Sorry," Hermione apologised later. "Instinct was difficult to suppress."

Severus gave a low snort but seemed to understand, rubbing her mane gently as she calmed herself down. "I feel the same whenever you leave," he admitted with some difficulty. "Anytime you leave," he added with embarrassment.

"Truly?" Hermione replied, her ears perked.

Severus nodded.

"I'm sorry," she apologised, wringing her hands.

Severus snorted. "It is not _your_ fault, Hermione. We both have new instincts and anatomy we are trying to get used to. We can only be fortunate that this didn't happen during the war."

Hermione's eyes grew into saucers. "I can't even… wow."

"Yeah," he agreed. "Shall we go for a walk? I fear we have not had much time alone recently."

Hermione smiled. "I suppose I can clear my schedule."

Severus gave her a look, eyebrow arching into his hair. He placed hand on her cheek, a flicker of pain reflected in his eyes.

Hermione placed her hand over his. "Severus, I will never push you away intentionally. I may joke that I am busy. I may say things that you may think I don't want to spend time with you, but believe me when I say I want to be with you. You, Severus. It's been you for a long time now. Do you believe me?"

Severus swallowed hard. "I'm starting to."

Hermione ran her thumb across his skin. "I need you to believe in me. I need you to believe in us." She guided his hands to her equine sides, staring at him meaningfully.

Severus stared at her, uncomprehendingly.

Hermione snorted and guided his hands to where her human abdomen would be if she were still human. She arched a brow at him.

Severus stared blankly.

Hermione exhaled with amusement and made a tiny, miniature nickering sound.

Severus' eyes flew open, widening to the size of teacup saucers. "Are you… are we… you're sure?"

Hermione pressed her palm to his cheek. "Over twenty mares confirmed it in the most embarrassing ways possible for a centaur who was not a centaur but a year previous."

Severus flushed. "The stallions said the chances… that often they go many years without—" He trailed off, looking flustered.

"You have very potent and determined dna, Severus," Hermione said with a flush.

Severus turned beet red.

Suddenly he fell to the ground, his breath coming in small frantic gasps.

Hermione touched his shoulders. "Severus, are you okay? Do you need to see Poppy?"

Severus clasped her hands together, staring into her eyes with a silence that was heavy.

Hermione looked down into her hands, feeling something pressed there from Severus'. She stared down, confused.

A ring of weathered gold with alternating diamonds and dark blue sapphires lay in her hand. She stared at it.

"Severus… this," Hermione stammered. "This is my great, great, grandmother's engagement ring. It means you…"

"Humbled myself before your father and asked for his daughter's hand," Severus said, his eyes were dark with emotion. "Hermione Granger. I am not perfect. I am flawed, untrusting, quick to anger, and even faster to misunderstand, but I swear to you I will try to be the man or… centaur I want to be for you. Will you have me, Hermione? Will you share your life with a broken man… who loves you… who has loved you for longer than he could step up and admit to?"

Hermione silently stared heirloom of her family. Severus had not only met her family, but he had done what no other suitor had thought to do: ask her father for her hand before asking her. Her father had given his blessing. The evidence was there, sitting in her palm. Her mother had worn it, her mother's mother before that and so on down the line.

Hermione trembled. They had danced around each other for years, sharing time, space, and conversation well into the night. She had been attracted to him for years, yet, he had always adamantly said there was nothing romantic to their relationship. Now, finally he was admitted that he not only felt there was something between them, but he felt it was something that would last. For someone like Severus, it was a big confession. She stared at the ring of her family's matriarchs, wondering how many Grangers had worn it before her.

Severus seemed to think Hermione was having second thoughts or perhaps that he had sprung the question too soon. He turned his head, closing his eyes. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pressure you. It was too soon." He began to back-pedal.

Hermione captured his hands, pulling them close to her chest. "No!" she exclaimed.

Severus' ears went flat against his skull, clearing taking her exclamation as rejection. As if to confirm the guess, the moonflower horses hung their heads dejectedly, the petals of the flowers closing as the inner horses withdrew.

"My answer is yes!" Hermione emphasized, She placed her hands against his cheeks and torqued his head around to look her in the face. "Yes, Severus. Yes, Merlin, _yes_!"

Severus' ears perked forward again. The moonflowers behind his ears opened, the small horse headed flowers peered out from behind his ears like a child playing hiding seek.

With nervous slowness, Severus placed the ring on Hermione's finger, and, as if resized by real magic, it fit perfectly. He stared into her face and slowly covered her mouth with his. Pollen horses nickered and frolicked around their heads. Moonflowers sprouted out of their manes, blooming to expose yet another horse head. Each new flower expelled another pollen horse to frolic with the others.

As Severus pulled away, his dark eyes were like the midnight sky. "I believe you," he said evenly.

Hermione tenderly planted a kiss on his aquiline nose. "I believe in us."

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Hermione knew danger was nearby before she actually saw her. Briarfoot came zooming over the far hill and dove under her body, affixing herself to Hermione to nurse in her panic. Hermione patted the frantic filly as she pawed her fingers through Hermione's mane for reassurance.

Severus and Firenze were on alert the moment they heard and saw Briarfoot's distress. Severus placed himself in front of Hermione with his wand out, and Firenze was beside him, rearing up on his hind legs to kick his legs out forward in readiness to pound something into the dirt with all speed. Firenze had his bow in his hand in a blur of automated movement. Between Severus' burning instinct to "protect his mate" and Firenze's to "protect the female at all cost" mixed with the shared need to "protect the foal," all of them were fit to march into war at a moment's notice.

Hermione shook off her instincts. They were on Hogwart's grounds. The chances of something horrible trying to eat her on the school grounds was not likely or at least not as likely as it would be if Hagrid was nearby with one of his experiments, charity cases, or random three-headed Grecian dogs that should have stayed in the Underworld. Ok, so Hogwart's wasn't perfectly safe, but, at least any potential Death Eater coming in had the chance of running into one of Hagrid's "things" and being tenderised.

No rampaging hippogriff came charging over the hill. A manticore didn't fly over the ridge, and a gorgon didn't cast her stony gaze at them either. Instead, Molly Weasley walked over the ridge, huffing slightly as she trudged towards them. Suddenly Briarfoot's panic made more sense. The last time Briar had seen Molly Weasley had not ended well.

Molly seemed to realise she had committed another unknown sin when she saw Firenze with his bow out, Severus with his wand out, and Hermione with her wand out as she positioned over Briarfoot.

Despite their appearance of looking like a half-horse, centaurs were, by far, far taller than even the tallest of horses. All centaurs were tall enough that their foals could stand and nurse without having to cram themselves into odd positions. This made adult centaurs quite the intimidating figure of protectiveness, and Severus had been intimidating without equine proportions added into the equation. Molly let out a huff of air.

"Hermione," Molly said, waving her hands in front of her in a peace-seeking gesture.

Minerva was hustling towards them from the other ridge. Apparently Molly had made an appointment to see the Headmistress and had decided to detour to see Hermione and Severus. It would have been fine, had Briarfoot not spotted the Weasley matriarch and panicked across the green to get to the "herd" for safety.

Hermione sighed, replacing her wand, and Severus did the same. Firenze seemed more dubious, but he lowered his bow and slung it over his shoulder once more.

Briarfoot whickered nervously, perhaps thinking Molly Weasley really was a Gorgon in disguise. Perhaps, Hermione thought, Briar wouldn't be so wrong in that assumption. Both were dangerous females with notorious tempers and stony gazes with purported fatal results. All you had to do was ask any of the Weasley children for confirmation on that special skill. Fred and George had many stories to tell in that regard.

By the time Molly managed to get close, Hermione was pinned by two male centaur that were still not convinced that violence wasn't the answer to any problem. She could sense the dual instincts running between them because she too had her fair share of them. Chiron may have blessed the centaur with civility, but instincts were instincts—as hard to suppress as one would attempt to stop reflexes.

The feel of Briar hiding between her legs was enough to plant the need to run. It wasn't to flee in fear as much as her priorities were immediately to get the foal out of harm's way. Despite the human logic that told her Molly was a friend, wouldn't intentionally harm her, and wasn't on a mission to have centaur for supper, she made a low utterance. It was the same call mares had used for countless years to summon their foals in times of danger—and it immediately caused Briar to still under her and not bring more attention to herself.

"Hermione," Molly panted as she came to a halt. She had her hands on her knees as she caught her breath. "Please, I came to apologise. I need to apologise."

Each centaur seemed to have the same balance of curiosity and wariness. One ear flicked forward, as one ear flattened back across their head. Minerva was catching up at last, and the expression on her face was apologetic. Hermione relaxed a little, giving a soft nicker as Minerva approached. She bowed her head to the Headmistress. Severus and Firenze mirrored her.

Molly was wringing her hands, a sure sign of her distress. It was one of the genuine tells that spoke of her emotional turmoil. "I'm sorry for what I said. I had no idea you were out there. I thought the Prophet story was just that, a story. The last time I believed anything from the Prophet, I thought you had hurt Harry, Hermione. If anything I've used the Prophet as a gauge of what not to believe."

Molly looked skyward. "When Ron and Lavender came back from speaking with you, they were tight-lipped. Never once did they say you were actually centaurs. If I had known, I would never have made the assumption that Rose was letting out the neighbour's horses in our yard again. Did you know she brought a pony in the house and had it in the bathtub? She tried to hide a horse in Arthur's workshop."

"I apologise," Molly said, bowing her head in shame. "I meant no offense. I intended no insult to you or—"

Briarfoot peered out from under Hermione's body, curiosity outweighing the more primal need to cling. She nickered nervously.

Molly noticed her, and her breath caught in her throat. "Oh, Merlin. Are you Briarfoot? Rose's friend?"

The little filly nodded, taking one more step out from under Hermione. She kept her hand on Hermione's foreleg, needing the comfort of her touch to give her courage in the face of instinct.

Molly's demeanor changed at the sight of Briarfoot clinging to Hermione's leg. "Hello, Briarfoot. My name is Molly Weasley. I'm Rose's grandmother. I'm very sorry for giving you a fright. I was very insulting without meaning to. I never meant to imply you were a horse. I swear it. Can you forgive me?"

The filly nickered, petting Hermione's leg with her hands. Hermione touched the filly's back and rubbed, helping Briar gain her confidence. Briar looked up at her for some signal of what to do. Hermione, Severus, and Firenze nodded to her to make her own choice.

Briar stepped out, slowly coming out from Hermione's larger shadow. She swallowed hard as her hooves danced on the ground. "Did you not see us, standing on the hill?"

Molly shook her head. "I was cooking inside the house. There was much to do, and I fear I wasn't paying as much attention to what was going on outside."

Briar looked dubious. "We always know where our herd is," she replied softly. "Is this not the same for your family?"

Molly let out a huff of air. "Believe you me, if it was possible to know where my sons, daughter, and grandbabies were at all times, I would be a lot less stress in my life." Molly's expression softened. "I'm sorry, Briarfoot. I have a temper about me, and sometimes I let it rule over me when I shouldn't. I did not mean to frighten you or insult you. Will you forgive me?" Molly held out her hands.

Briar looked up at Firenze, and he nickered at her in encouragement.

Slowly, Briar put her hand in Molly's. Her ears were laid back against her head, and her rump was pressed tight against Hermione's, but she made a valiant effort to meet the Weasley matriarch half way.

"May I hug you?" Molly asked.

Briar stomped nervously but nodded. "Okay."

Molly folded her arms around the young filly and rubbed her back as she would a human child, unintentionally soothing Briar's mane in a manner her herd would comfort her.

Briar relaxed into the hug and smiled shyly.

"Will you forgive me, Briarfoot?"

The young filly nickered softly, petting Molly's hair. "I forgive you."

McGonagall let out a sigh of relief, echoed by the three adult centaur.

Molly pulled a miniature basket out from under her shawl and tapped it with her wand to enlarge it. "There are for you, Briarfoot. It's a token of my apology."

Briar's eyes went wide as she stared at the now giant basket of shining apples. She nickered in glee. "For me?"

Molly nodded.

Briar looked at Hermione, Severus, and Firenze for permission, and each of them smiled and nodded to the young filly.

Briar hugged the giant basket. "Thank you!" She plucked out the largest apples and placed them in Firenze, Severus, Hermione, and Minerva's hands. "May I take these to Flint and Meadowrun?"

"Do not gallop in the halls, youngling," Firenze ordered.

Briar plastered her ears back. "I wouldn't!"

"Go then," Severus said with a sniff.

Briar, shyness forgotten over a basket of tasty apples, glomped Molly and galloped up the path to Hogwarts. She pulled herself into a brisk walk as she neared the doors and dove through the main entryway, disappearing out of sight.

"Thank you for apologising to her," Hermione said as she watched Briarfoot disappear. She pressed into Severus and Firenze for comfort of her own.

Molly stood and looked up at Hermione, somewhat daunted by the change in size. Always before, Molly had seemed taller than the "children" no matter what age they were. "I owe you three an apology as well," Molly said. "I am sorry my temper caused his hurt. Had I known it was true, I would have set the picnic on the lawn and not reacted so badly to seeing what I thought were horses on the front porch."

Firenze sniffed, stomping a foot. His hand was rubbing Hermione's mane gently to calm the mare wedged between them. "Misunderstandings were had, Mrs Weasley," he said after a while. "The centaur are familiar with such things. We left quickly to calm our foal, whose experience with humans has been limited to Hogwarts."

Molly sighed with relief. "We're having a family cookout next holiday break. I would be honoured if you would join us again. I promise it will be better than the last."

The three centaur exchanged glances. "Very well, Mrs Weasley," Firenze said after taking some time to ponder the offer.

"Now," McGonagall broke in, putting her hand on her hips. "I believe we were scheduled for a meeting, Molly," the ruffled Animagus said.

Molly looked sheepish. "Sorry, sorry, yes. Thank you."

Minerva shook her head as she escorted Molly Weasley away.

The miniature herd of centaur students came galloping down from Hogwarts, enjoying the basket of apples Molly had brought.

Flint and Meadowrun ran between the adult legs, petting their legs and underbelly as they nickered happily.

Briarfoot whinnied happily, holding out the basket to her elders. "Could you take the rest to our guests from the other herds?" she asked with a soft nicker.

Firenze smiled down at her. "Of course," he replied with a smile. "You do well to remember our guests in the face of such tasty spoils."

Briar beamed at him.

"Come," Firenze said with a toss of his head. "We can take them to our guests together."

The colt and fillies followed Firenze into the woods, leaving Hermione and Severus alone.

Hermione's stomach growled, and Hermione's ears plastered to the side of her head.

"Hungry?" Severus asked, eyebrows raising into his hair.

Hermione looked at him desperately. "Tell me you have stash of oats somewhere."

"Cooked oats?" he asked, "for breakfast cereal?"

Hermione shook her heads. "I'm craving oats. I'm not even sure I care what kind."

Severus eyed Hermione's equine belly.

Hermione's hands were tugging at his collar. "And salted, smoked fish," she said with sudden urgency.

"At the same—?" Severus started to question.

"Yes!" Hermione hissed.

Severus swallowed hard. "Come, let's see what we can find."

Later, at the High Table, multiple heads turned to watch Hermione devouring a giant bowl of oats and smoked fish with the enthusiasm of Ronald Weasley and a pile of sausages.

Professor Lupin chuckled into his hand as he passed Hermione a drink. "I remember with Dora was pregnant with Teddy. It was all I could do to keep her fed with Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans, Ginger Newts, and Treacle Tarts covered in pepper imps.

Hermione's eyes went wide, swallowing hard as she tried to determine how many of the High Table knew her secret.

Remus took her hand and stroked it tenderly, shaking his head. He pointed to his nose, knowingly. "Have you set a date?" he mouthed silently.

Hermione and Severus shook their heads together.

"Let me know if you plan to elope," Remus said knowingly. "I know of a great little hill in the middle of nowhere. Great view, perfect sunsets, and far away from the eyes of the Daily Prophet."

Hermione nickered lowly. "Thank you, Remus."

Remus winked at her.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Patrol was not so unlike that which Harry complained about in his Auror job, only patrol for the professors of Hogwarts involved the safety of countless swarms of mischievous children rather than law-breaking Dark wizards.

Harry, in combination with Kingsley, had been good enough to insure that the testing of Hermione and Severus' transformation had not been the act of Dark magic. Neither Severus nor Hermione truly believed it was, but it had to go on the record somewhere that no one had done it to them on purpose. Considering it had been Neville that had been the instigator, there was a certain Herbology professor that had been worried that he'd inadvertently used Dark magic on his friend.

Severus, on the other hand, stated during the examination that if anyone could accidentally curse someone by Dark magic into a centaur, it would be Neville Longbottom. He quipped that Neville was far too incompetent in potions to purposely cause a disaster. Blowing things up had been Seamus Finnigan's forté, afterall.

As Hermione walked down the emptying hallways, she ushered the younger and often lost first years to their dorms. Stairways, playful and mischievous as always, liked to place people in places they shouldn't be. Cranky portraits liked to give false directions, and children running away from Argus Filch always seemed to end up tangled in the tapestries on the 3rd floor. Thanks to her new ears, Hermione was very hard to avoid, and many of the students seemed to think she could arrive at anywhere in the school at a moment's notice.

Hermione's reputation as a tracker in Hogwarts was matched only by Severus, whose previous ability to catch lollygaggers and miscreants as a human had been practically supernatural to begin with. That talent alone probably fed the rumour that he was a vampire or at least a bat Animagus. She found it ironic that Severus was the furthest thing from a bat in his Animagus form, and now that he was a centaur, he seemed to have far better public relations. Now, instead of scoffing talk about how evil he was sacrificing children to the Dark Lord in his cauldrons, whispers filled the halls on how sexy he was.

Severus' response to this had been expected. He flattened his ears against his head, grit his teeth, and started taking points when people breathed at him wrong. It didn't help. Young teenage girls seemed to think that even more attractive.

"Should I be jealous, Severus?" Hermione had asked as they patrolled the halls together.

Severus had growled. "You have nothing to be jealous about."

"Countless young teenagers lusting after your fine proportions?" Hermione had suggested.

"Countless young teenagers are not you," he had snapped, pinning his ears back.

Hermione had laughed, her bell-like laughter filling the halls of Hogwarts.

Hermione's ears perked, her musings brought to the present by the sound of quiet sobbing up the North Tower. Somewhere up the Divination Stairwell, a child was crying, and the Divination Stairwell was not exactly welcoming for the bulk of a centaur. There were many on staff who believed Sybill Trelawney preferred it this way. Her rivalry with Firenze over traditional divination versus centaur divination was well known. Whether Sybill, herself, actually had a bigotry against centaur remained to be seen. She locked herself away in the North Tower like Rapunzel waiting for her prince, hiding behind her crystal balls, thick glasses, vague predictions of death, doom, and gastric distress.

Firenze and Severus had been adamant that no matter how insignificant a thing she wanted to check up on during patrol that she should send a Patronus to either or both of them. Both stallions were barely able to let her patrol alone, and it was only this stipulation that managed to get Hermione out the door without having both of them glued to her flanks.

Sighing, she sent a Patronus to Severus telling him that she was going to cram her way up the Divination stairway looking for a crying child, just in case she got stuck on the stairs. If anything, that was more of a concern than anything else.

It was past 10 in the evening, so a part of Hermione wondered why a child would choose this particular stairwell for crying on. There were so many more easily accessible crying places, if one were to pick one. Maybe a student took one of Trelawney's horrible doom prophecies seriously.

Hermione eyed the small doorway that led to the stairwell and frowned. There was no way in Hades she was going to fit through that door. Sighing, she turned into her otter form with a squeak and proceeded to bounce up the stairs in haste towards the sound of the crying.

She didn't make it but halfway up the stairs when Hermione froze in place. Her ears perked. Far more used to paying attention to small sounds, subtle whickers, and soft fluxes in tone, she realised the sound of the crying hadn't changed. There wasn't a human alive that cried the same for an extended period of time. She looked up the stairwell, her otter whiskers perked forward as her nose worked.

She hunkered down in the shadows, listening and scenting.

The child crying was an instinctual draw. It was natural to want to rush in and comfort the young, now more than ever, but her senses were telling her something was off. As much as she wanted to press forward, call out into the darkness, something told her to be quiet and still herself against the walls of the stairwell.

She looked at the painting of nymphs that normally hung at the midpoint of the stairs. The normally happy sprites were holding their hands out in front them like Muggle crossing guards, waving her to stop. They looked frantically up towards the top of the tower, shaking their head back and forth in distinctive warning.

Something was wrong, and she realised what it was. The crying had stopped. There were no sniffles. There were none of the tell-tale sounds that came after having a really long cry. Hermione was no stranger to crying.

Hermione backed up, slowly easing her way down the stairs, little by little, keeping her eyes, nose, and ears tuned for the slightest movement. Fully alarmed, Hermione silently and wandlessly summoned her Patronus, knowing the moment it appeared it would expose her position if someone was looking for her in the dark of the stairs. She had to risk sending the Patronus. If there was something there and she didn't make it to the bottom, there was a good chance no one would know she was even in trouble until hours later.

She sucked in her breath, released her Patronus, and ran down the stairs as fast as her webbed feet allowed.

There was a flash of magic in the dark. She could feel it following her, and she knew in that moment no disillusionment spell would help her. He fur was on end as and tore a path down the stairs, zig-zagging in an attempt to avoid whatever spell was making its way towards her. She had just made it to the doorway and dove through it, sliding her belly across the stone flagstones as her paws scrambled for purchase to pull her down the corridor.

Pain tore through her.

Her body was slashed. Blood was gushing from her body, but she knew she couldn't stop. She made the decision to stay in her otter form, despite how much slower it was compared to a fully galloping centaur. Centaurs were huge targets. Otters, on the other hand, were annoyingly hard to catch. If she could just keep enough blood inside her to fuel her run down the hallway—

Stone and bits rained down on her from above. The damaging spell sliced into the stone like butter, causing it to fall on her. Privately saying prayers of thanks that the walls of Hogwarts had taken one for the team, she mentally reminded herself to hug Hogwarts at a future point. Hugging the floor as she scrambled across it didn't count.

Her body was aching. She felt dizzy.

Blood loss.

Her heart was beating wildly, trying to pump what little blood she had to her limbs, but all it did was pump even more of her blood out the wounds she had. She was losing her battle. Rivulets of red, green, and silver made her fur slick. Tendrils were emerging from her open gashes and slithering together, knitting her wounds together, but she didn't notice.

 _Run._

 _Run faster._

Her lungs burned. Her body ached.

 _Keep running._

She squeaked in terror as hands grasped her body.

"Hermione!" Severus' voice broke through her panic.

 _Mate. Safe. Safe! Herd. Safe!_

Firenze bellowed in pain as a spell connected to him. Hermione smelled blood, Firenze's blood, and saw the gash on his side.

The sound of hooves clattering on the flagstones met with the telltale sound of a bow being pulled back and an arrow leaving the string.

There was a bellow and the sound of ripping cloth, and more hoofbeats. Minerva's voice pierced the commotion, and light flooded the hallway corridors with the intensity of the sun.

Severus was casting spells in rapid succession.

Someone or something tore away from where Firenze's arrow pinned it to the wall, fleeing down the halls.

"Portraits, awake!" Minerva yelled. "Tell me where that THING goes!"

"Yes, Headmistress!" rang the voices of many portraits.

"Severus, take her to Poppy!" Minerva's voice ordered, brokering no refusal. "Go!"

Hermione felt herself being carried away, but the warmth of Severus' arms was all she needed to know. Her eyes drifted close at last.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Minerva McGonagall was ready to set things on fire. One of her professors had been attacked in the halls of Hogwarts, and the trail had gone cold. She reached the Divination Stairwell and the trail went cold. The sole portrait in the stairwell was full of gesticulating nymphs and dryads, pointing silently towards the top of the tower. The trail of blood, however, had mysteriously disappeared, almost as if someone had used a Scourgify on the hallways.

Minerva knew better than to think the blood had never been shed. She had seen Hermione's body as Severus had carried her off to the hospital wing. There had been far more blood lost than one fleeing otter should have had, so it was miracle she was still alive. Minerva had faith, however, that if anyone could survive near fatal amounts of damage, it would be either Hermione or Severus. Severus had already proven it once. Hermione was just the type not to let blood loss get in the way of survival.

Minerva busted into Sybill Trelawney's private chambers using her Headmistress's chain of authorisation spells that took about two minutes just to say, even in rapid succession. Hogwarts seemed to realise that she was extra needy at that moment, and the door opened without further authorisation.

Minerva climbed up the trapdoor that led into the classroom, summoning a mage light to follow her. Filius Flitwick had arrived below her, and he huffed as he climbed the ladder into the classroom.

"Such an annoying classroom," Flitwick huffed. "I got your Patronus, Minerva. How can I help?"

Minerva gestured to the classroom.

Flitwick charmed a few hovering lamps to fill the room with light. The room had an odd tea shoppe feel to it. Crystal balls were strewn about, but some of them had been thrown to the floor by some unseen force. Tins of tea were thrown around, leaving a trail of odd tea leaves on the floor.

Flitwick frowned as he exchanged glances with Minerva. The swath of destruction led to an open window. One window was completely torn off the hinges as the curtain dangled outside the window.

Minerva looked out the window into the darkness outside.

Flitwick nudged her.

Minerva looked to where he was pointing. Strange hoofprints were cast into the tea trail, but there was something off about them. She couldn't quite place why. They were not quite hoofprints from a note quite something.

She and Flitwick worked their way over to Trelawney's actual chambers connected to the classroom. She knocked on the door. "Sybill? Sybill, dear, are you alright?"

Whether the door was already open or if Hogwarts figured she needed in, Minerva wasn't sure, but the door creaked open, and she and Flitwick moved into the room.

"Sybill, are you okay?" Minerva asked into the dark.

Flitwick waved his wand, and all the candles in the room lit, casting the room in an orange glow.

Sybill was under a pile of duvets, her glasses still stuck to her face as drool came out of the corner of her mouth. She was snoring fitfully and snorted like a pig as she woke.

"Wha—" the Divination professor mumbled. "Is it time for breakfast already? I'm sure someone is going to choke on their oatmeal. Death, you know. Death everywhere."

Minerva let out a soft sigh and shook her head.

Trelawney was fine, well, as fine as Sybill Trelawney ever was.

"Go back to sleep, dear," Minerva tutted, pulling the duvet on the top over the groggy Divination professor.

"What's going on, Minerva?" Flitwick asked as they climbed back down the ladder to the Divination classroom.

"Hermione was attacked," McGonagall answered grimly. "Here, on these stairs."

"Will you be calling in the Aurors, Minerva?" Flitwick asked, adjusting his glasses that were trying to fly off his face.

"Already done," Harry Potter answered from below them. He peered up the stairwell as Ronald Weasley and two other unknown Aurors flanked him.

"Mr Potter," Minerva sighed. "Thank you for coming on such short notice."

"It's not a problem, Headmistress McGonagall," Harry said with a curt smile. "Thank you for giving us that floo to port into."

Minerva shook her head. "I wish we didn't need it, but Professor Granger was attacked tonight. Here on this stairwell. The portraits led me here, but whatever or whoever it was, seems to have found a way into the tower and escaped out the window."

"Hermione?" Ronald exclaimed. "Is she okay?"

Harry raised his hand to shush him. "I will have Collins and Ramford investigate the halls, Headmistress. Ron, you should run the traces through the tower. I'll go interview Hermione, if she is well enough."

Minerva nodded grimly.

"Come on, mate," Ron protested. "You're better at traces than me. I can go interview 'Mione."

Harry turned his head to look at Ron. "Ron, it won't just be Hermione. Snape and Firenze are going to be there, and they are probably going to be super protective. Do you really want to go there right now?"

Ron turned a little pale at the mention of a protective Snape and Firenze. His past experiences with centaurs had not be overly stellar. Ron waved him off. "I got it."

Ron pulled out his wand and got to work. Collins and Ramford paired off to work the halls.

Harry, bowing his head to McGonagall and Flitwick, followed the two professors to the Hospital Wing—the place that always seemed to have either Harry, Ron, or Hermione in one of the beds at every given year.

Somethings, he decided, would never change, even when he had a job far from Hogwarts. Hogwarts always drew him back.

One way… or another.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Harry sat down in a nearby chair as he watched over Hermione. She was sprawled against Severus, who had tucked himself against her. Firenze was nearby as well.

No longer in her otter form, deep gashes were slashed across her honey-coloured fur both across her belly and her legs. Severus was holding a potion to her mouth, helping her sip it slowly. Firenze was gently stroking Hermione's back to calm her, and Hermione was snuggled between them as her breaths were slowly coming down to a regular respiration rate.

Poppy was rubbing ointment in her gashes, but what was the most fascinating were the wounds themselves. Each of her gashes were healing as he watched. Small tendrils, like vines, were weaving with each other and tightening, pulling together Hermione's wounds. Pollen horses were walking across her skin, snuffling at her wounds. Her skin was aglow with vine and leaf patterns in shimmering silver and green. The moonflowers were nickering softly, lulling Hermione into a sort of healing trance.

"She's going to be fine, Severus," Poppy said, touching his shoulder. "Whatever it is that made you this way seems to want to keep you healthy too."

The black centaur furrowed his brows, but he nodded to her. He watched the wounds healing in front of him, and it seemed to help calm him as well.

Soft, nervous nickering came from the door, and three young centaur peered into the hospital wing. Harry had to smile. They were so much like Hermione, Ron, and he had been in their youth. Minerva seemed to make an exception for these children, much as Poppy had given up on trying to keep Hermione, Ron, and himself from visiting each other in the Infirmary.

Flint, Meadowrun, and Briarfoot trotted over and flopped up against their herdmates, leading into them for comfort and to provide comfort to them. Harry found it interesting that Snape didn't protest the young centaur joining the pile, even when they leaned up against Hermione. The young colt and filly carefully tucked themselves around her, touching her skin but avoiding her wounds.

Snape was rubbing Hermione's neck absently with his fingers, gently tugging her head under his chin. Hermione's eyes were half closed. Her tail swished lazily back and forth. It unnerved him somewhat to see Snape so at ease and close to Hermione, but he knew that it was his personal hangup more than not knowing Hermione was close to his old Potions professor. Hermione and Snape had been colleagues for far longer than they had been teacher and student. They had been close a long time. This newer, more open closeness, even if it had been brought on by a strange and magical transformation, was undoubtedly bringing Hermione peace of mind. She deserved that, at the very least.

She was healing, and she was calm. It made Harry feel better to know she was going to be okay. Questions could wait until her wounds had healed.

Firenze gave a startled snort. He touched his side where one of the spells had slashed into his chest. Some of Hermione's blood, distinctively silver, green, and red, had smeared onto him. As Harry watched, his Auror curiosity peaked, one of the pollen horses danced around Firenze's skin from Hermione's and then slammed into his wound, blending with her blood that was seeping into his damaged skin.

Firenze patted his skin, his brows furrowing. "It's gone," he said with wonder. "The wound is gone."

Snape turned his head to look, his brows furrowing.

"Chiron's blessing," Firenze sighed with something akin to joy and relief. "Everything is going to be fine, brother."

Harry watched as a tangible relief seemed to settle over the centaur, and with both Firenze and Snape feeling relaxed, the three young centaur snuggled in closer and closed their eyes. Pollen horses pranced across Hermione's skin, and the pale white flowers bobbed their heads in the evening breeze.

"Harry," Hermione greeted him, voice half-laden with drowsiness.

"Hey, Hermione," Harry replied warmly. "If you wanted me to visit, you could have just sent me an owl."

Hermione smiled at him serenely. "And break decades of Hogwarts tradition?" she said with a grin. "Never!"

Hermione extended her hand out to him, and Harry approached, sitting on the cushion next to her as he placed his hands in hers. The warmth of her smile transferred through the warmth of her hands. "I can always count on you to be there to root out trouble," she trailed off, her eyes closing. Her hands remained around his.

Harry felt eyes upon him. Snape's dark eyes bored into him as if evaluating his soul for the Afterlife. Then, suddenly, the centaur stallion simply closed his eyes, pressing his nose into Hermione's mane. Judgment made, Harry realised he was a evaluated to be safe enough to sleep around. It was, he supposed, a high compliment coming for someone like Snape.

One of the moonflowers in Hermione's hair snuffled Harry's face and then sneezed pollen over him, coating his face and black hair with yellow granules.

Harry sighed. He supposed he couldn't have Snape accept his presence and be treated well by magical foliage in the same night. That would have been… unnatural.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-

A/N: Hrm… what or whom do you think caused the drama, do you think? Heh. heh. heh.


	8. Chapter 8 No Means No!

**A/N** : Heh, sorry, but the flower just sneezed on Harry. It wasn't trying to convert him. The transformation takes intent and the right "heart." Harry's heart belongs to Ginny in this story (and his kids), and I'm not a home-wrecker!

 **Beta Love:** fluffpanda, who keeps me on target, somehow. It's a miracle!

Sehanine, who helps trip over the grammar holes.

 **The Heart of the Herd**

 **Chapter 8**

 **No Means No**

Hermione woke feeling much better, physically at least. Her mind, however, was having a bit of freak out session. The comfort of her mini-herd was undeniable, but the part of her that had grown up human for quite a bit longer wasn't quite ready to kick the bucket just yet.

The attack, while traumatic in its own right, was not what was giving her mind a good run. It was her condition. During the course of half a year, she had been transformed into a new species, had to tell her parents about it, become intimate for the first time with someone who had tried to convince her nothing could ever come it it, ended up pregnant, been proposed to, accepted the proposal, craved odd foods like oats and smoked fish, and found out that she was in a perpetual state of lactation for the "betterment of the herd." It was a little much to take in, and that block in her brain that had just been able to take it like a trooper was starting to get tired.

The foal!

Was it okay? Was it hurt?

She was going to have a… FOAL!

Was she okay with that? HOW was she okay with that?

It had been months since she and Severus had found out she was with foal, but only now was the idea really settling in. She was going to have a baby—a foal. Even if there was a cure for her condition… could she take it, knowing that her child was a centaur? Would she even take it, having found a strange sort of peace and undeniable bond with the centaur people? What would happen if the change… wore off?

Hermione whinnied softly in distress, standing up from where she had been sleeping and bolted upright, rising to her legs in a surge of motion. The others were passed out in a convenient comatose state, and she quickly propelled herself forward before the tug of the herd's comfort ensnared her again. She wanted a clear mind, or at least, as close to one as she could manage. Being close to the herd was like a tranquiliser. The world could be ending, but as long as she felt the touch of another centaur her instincts would tell her it was okay. She wondered how Firenze had been able to stand it, being separated from his herd during the war.

Dumbledore, whether he had truly realised it or not, had asked Firenze to tolerate something no centaur would ever want to do: be deprived of another's comforting touch. She figured Dumbledore couldn't have known. He must have thought"it will be hard for Firenze, but it's for the best." Without being a centaur, he would have had no idea at all the kind of social and mental suicide it would have taken to leave, no matter how right the reason. Hermione respected Firenze's strength even more, now that she knew.

Harry, who had been passed out on the nearby bed, woke as she passed. He eyed her somewhat frantically and then relaxed.

Hermione silently gestured to him to follow her.

As Hermione stopped at Poppy's desk to have her look her over, Severus lifted his head. She and Harry began to walk out of the hospital wing, and he started to get up. A soft hand on his shoulder stopped him.

"Give her some time to sort out her head with an old friend, brother," Firenze said with a nod. "She has had us from the start, but I imagine she hasn't been able to have a long talk with Harry since her transformation. Poppy wouldn't have allowed her to leave if she had been hurt."

Severus flicked his ears nervously, fighting his instincts. Finally, he nodded.

The three foals jolted awake together, making nervous sounds when Hermione was missing.

"Be at peace, younglings," Firenze soothed. "Hermione shall return to us again. She always does."

-o-o-o-o-o-

"You're sure?" Harry asked with wonder. "How do you even—?" He stared at her equine body. "You say it has been months, but I can't tell. I'm rubbish with centaur anatomy."

Hermione chuckled. "Scent, apparently. Remus knows."

Harry's eyes grew wide. "My supposedly hidden escapades with Ginny are suddenly so much more exposed and embarrassing."

Hermione gave a short laugh. "Try being poked and prodded by about twenty elder mares, Harry. You will definitely be desensitised to the idea of privacy."

Harry half-choked. He ran his hand through his hair and frowned. He stared at his pollen-covered hand. "Your moonflowers sneezed on me."

Hermione arched a brow. "It's a blessing, apparently," she answered. "They just bite Neville… or snub him."

"Really?"

Hermione nodded. "Every time he tries to examine one of them, he gets bitten by a flower. He says he gets treated better by the fanged geraniums and the venomous tentacula."

Harry gave a small smile. "Poor bloke. Any sign of a cure for his parents?"

Hermione shook her head. "I don't know, Harry. Whatever did this to me and to Severus, it seems to benefit the centaurs, but it's not like we can test it on a human patient in good conscience. What if it had odd side effects? The elders seem to think the plant made the choice to change us. It judged us and made its own decision regarding our fate. As for our healing properties, which you've seen from last night, it obviously works to help heal another centaur, but there is no telling what it would do for a human."

Harry shrugged. "The flower sneezed on me, and I haven't sprouted pointed ears."

Hermione snorted. "That would be an improvement."

"Hey!" Harry scoffed, shoving her arm.

Hermione shrugged. "I happen to think long, pointed ears are quite sexy."

Harry arched a brow. "Black ones, perhaps."

"Especially black ones," Hermione said with a wink.

Harry almost managed to suppress a shudder, but failed.

Hermione tsked. "Harry," she admonished. "He wants to be good to me He wants to do right by me. Surely that is worth a little less shuddering?"

Harry waved his hands. "No, Hermione. I'm happy for you. It's just… Ron and I never knew him like you do. We just remember how he was.

Hermione looked skyward. "He can't help but see your mother and your father when he looks at you, Harry."

Harry winced. "My father was a git to him," he admitted. "Mother just couldn't handle being an exception to all the hate for Muggle-borns. I think… I think she wanted something from him he could never give."

Hermione tilted her head. "What?"

Harry took took Hermione's hands together and held them. "This, Hermione. I think she wanted simple affection in front of everyone. She wanted to be something he was proud of. She wanted something like my father's brazen affection, and he couldn't give it. Not then. I don't think he could ever have."

Hermione furrowed her brows.

Harry smiled at her. "She wasn't you, Hermione. You unlocked that in him. It wasn't the love of my mother transferred. It wasn't some penance to her memory that opened him up to proposing to you. It was you, Hermione. He will stay with you until the world is dust and ash. You can see it in his eyes, and I can't help but be a little envious."

Hermione flattened her ears. "Envious? Why?"

"Don't get me wrong," Harry said. "I love Ginny. She loves me. I love our life and our children, but if Ginny looked at me just once the way Snape looks at you, Hermione, I don't think I'd ever leave the bedroom."

"Harry!" Hermione sputtered.

Harry laughed, clasping her hands in his own. "In all seriousness. There is something raw there. It is something so genuine, I can't even deny it. He loves you. He would take a Cruciatus for you, and I think, had I known he was capable of that back when we were growing up, things would have been different."

Hermione hugged Harry tight. "I love you, Harry."

Harry rubbed her back and the base of her mane. "I love you too, Hermione. You've always been a sister to me. I am sorry I didn't always appreciate you."

Hermione smiled sadly. "We all have moments when we cannot appreciate what we have. I think… I think I can accept what has happened to me better, now."

Harry gently rubbed Hermione's back at the base of her mane, getting accustomed to the change in comfort methods. He had learned that as her close pseudo-family friend, he was allowed to touch. He could drape his arm across her back, massage her muscles, and rub her ears. He would be allowed, Hermione had explained, to help her put on baskets and carrying gear if she needed to haul things, and if she asked, he would be able to attach her to a travois or cart.

As one of Hermione's close friends, he could even ride upon her back, if she so chose, and it wouldn't carry the stigma it would the night Harry had unintentionally shamed Firenze. It hadn't been that he had ridden on his back, strictly, that had pissed off Bane and Magorian that night. It had been that none of them truly knew or trusted Harry; they hadn't had a true link to him. Firenze had carried a practical stranger, one which they knew only by reputation and the stars, rather than by deed. Harry had brought danger to the centaur people, and then Firenze had carried danger on his back in the forest where their foals and mares were hiding.

Now, after seeing how close the herd-family was, Harry understood much better what he hadn't growing up. The centaur herd was as close if not closer than a nuclear human family. Unlike with human families, where the mother, father, and children made up the core dynamic, herd members were as important as dam and sire. It wasn't to say they all got along famously all the time, no more than it was true in human families. It was to say, however, that the young centaur had an abundance of love coming from multiple places. Part of Harry wondered, if his Aunt Petunia had been a centaur… just how dysfunctional would it have made her to turn on both her sister and her nephew as she did?

Harry make a choking sound.

"What is it, Harry?" Hermione asked.

"I just wondered, in my head, what the centaur would have done with someone like Dudley," Harry mused.

Hermione's eyes went wide. "I'm not sure. I'd like to think he would never have been… like he was, if centaurs had raised him."

"Kind of like the opposite of being raised by wolves," Harry mused. "It would have been better for him to be raised by centaurs."

Hermione snorted. "I'd hope so, anyway, and hey, maybe Dudley would have turned out good if Remus has raised him."

Harry snickered. "I'm thinking Hagrid could have raised him better. Witherwings even."

"Fang? Hermione mused.

Harry grinned wickedly. "Fang."

"How is it, having centaur children in Hogwarts?" Harry asked.

"They are infinitely curious," Hermione said. "Take me with a chance to look at the world's largest library only apply it to everything. I have talked to Minerva about the accommodations for the centaur foals, however. She agrees that having a place for them to gather together is intrinsic to their mental health. Unlike goblins, they need to be able to touch their herdmates for security. I had no idea they were running to Firenze every night before returning to their normal dorms."

Harry nodded. "I hear you've made it happen already of sorts. A sort of shared common area?"

Hermione nodded. "I didn't, if you will believe it. Hogwarts did."

Harry tilted his head. "Hogwarts always was curiously more intelligent than Crabbe or Goyle."

"Harry!" Hermione laughed.

"What?"Harry protested. "It's true!"

Hermione rolled her eyes. "At first I thought the lack of privacy would drive me mad, but it's calming to have the foals around. They get their homework done faster too."

Harry snorted. "With three professors there to pester for questions, I should hope so."

"Harry," Hermione huffed, shaking her head.

Harry grinned. "So, do you remember anything specific about the attack, Hermione?"

The centaur witch frowned. "There was a crying child, or so I thought. I turned into an otter to fit on the stairs. I got maybe half way up, and I noticed the portrait of the nymphs. They were waving at me to stop. They were warning me not to go up."

Harry frowned. "Was there anything else you saw?"

"It wasn't about seeing," Hermione said strangely. "It was what I wasn't seeing. There was no child that I could see, and the crying was repetitive. It was too repetitive. Then, it stopped. I started to back out, but I had to send a Patronus. The moment it left me, whatever it was knew I was there, and the spells came after me. I was running. At that point, all I knew was I had to keep running. It was all I could do to keep another spell from hitting me."

"Did you recognise the energy?" Harry said, pulling out his wand to run it over Hermione's body. The wounds she had were gone, not a trace of them lay on her skin. He clucked his tongue against his teeth. "There are traces of Dark magic, Hermione, but it's barely noticeable. It's like your body is cancelling it out."

Hermione raised her eyebrows. Two moonflower horses peered out from behind her ears and neighed at Harry, shaking their petal manes at him.

"Collins and Ramford found little in the hallway," Harry detailed. "They found a tear of cloth from where Firenze shot at it, but short of a few drops of your blood at the end of your run, the rest of the hallway was disturbingly clear. They're with Ron now, searching the Divination Tower. Trelawney is apparently snoring through the entire affair. They tried to wake her to let her know they were searching her rooms, but she apparently snores like Fang and sleeps as deeply as Hagrid."

Hermione shook her head. "Trelawney has never been quite right," she admitted. "Quite a few students prefer her style of Divination, but most of the students seem to like Firenze's style of teaching better."

"Do you have any reason to think Trelawney would have something against you?" Harry asked.

"Trelawney?" Hermione repeated. "No! I mean, I did quit her class and call it a bunch of mindless drivel, but that was a long time ago, Harry. I am civil to her now, and while I may think she's off her rocker, I don't say that to her face with children watching."

Harry sighed. "Does anyone know about your blood, Hermione? Other than Neville and the other centaur?"

"Minerva?" Hermione speculated. "It is possible someone else may have found out, but I haven't actually been advertising anything. The foals know, and they talk amongst themselves. Someone could have heard, but until last night with Firenze, none of us had confirmed it could heal on a live subject. We only tested the samples."

"Where are those samples?"

"I took them to Magorian," Hermione said. "His decision was that it was too risky to expose a possible cure that would spur people to invade centaur forests for either the flower or centaur blood—especially if it meant exposing me or Severus to scrutiny. It was one thing to try to save Neville's parents, but he didn't want to risk any one of us being locked up in a cage somewhere like a resource to be tapped."

Harry nodded. "As much as I'm for helping Neville, Hermione," he agreed, "we both know what could happen if Muggles found out about such a cure. Wizarding folk would not be so different, if they thought it was a miracle cure."

"I want to help Neville," Hermione said adamantly, "but I cannot risk the centaur's safe homes, even for him."

Harry held her hand. "It's okay, Hermione. Neville will understand, if he doesn't already." Harry paused, his eyes widening. "Maybe, and this is a big if, but maybe if you do find a way to make what you have into a viable cure, you can have Mr and Mrs Longbottom transferred temporarily to Hogwarts under Poppy's care. She knows about you, but she'd never tell. She already knows about your blood, pollen, and sap. If it worked, you could administer it here. Get a temporary transfer from St. Mungo's. Maybe use an excuse that Neville wants his parents to see the supermoon over the Black Lake?"

Hermione's face burst into a smile. "Harry, you're wonderful! That could work!" She frowned suddenly. "Supermoon?"

Harry blushed. "I've been reading some of the papers Arthur brings home—the Telegraph and the Sun."

Hermione looked at Harry seriously. "Tell me you haven't been encouraging Arthur to read the Sun, Harry?"

Harry flushed. "He really likes it. I don't have the heart to tell him—"

"Harry James Potter," Hermione half-screeched. "I will not have you corrupting Arthur Weasley into thinking the SUN is a legitimate newspaper that portrays real life in the Muggle World!"

"Hey, at least he's not reading Private Eye any more," Harry said, shrugging off Hermione's irritation.

Hermione rolled her eyes. "If you want to have an intelligent Muggle conversation, Harry, talk to my parents. They adore you and would love to talk about… supermoons with you sans all the drama."

Harry gave a lopsided grin that seemed so like Sirius Black.

Suddenly there was yell from above them, and Harry and Hermione looked up to see Ramford dangling by his hands from the broken North Tower window. Ron's voice was yelling spells, flashes of light were coming out of the North Tower, and Ramford was losing his grip very fast.

Harry was on the move in an instant, leaping onto his enlarge broomstick with his wand as he sprung of the ground and shot into the air. He gripped his broom tightly as he channeled his years as Seeker into the rescue of his fellow Auror. In the meantime Ramford was blasted out the side of the North Tower wall, debris knocking Collins off the broken window. Down he plunged, and Harry zoomed after.

Hermione bolted into action, wand out, summoning her cushioning spell, levitation spell, and roping spell in rapid succession. She galloped at top speed, latching onto the rope and pulling Ramford across the green as he slowly fell. Her hooves pounded into the ground as divots went flying in all directions, pulling Ramford towards the Black Lake. Ramford splashed down into the lake, cushioned by her spell. He skipped like a stone across the lake surface and came to a halt, and began to sink, but Hermione had him, pulling him to the shore. He was soaked to the bone, but he was alive and unhurt.

Hermione panted as Ramford dripped and tried to catch his breath from the strain and screaming of his fall. Hermione, gathering her thoughts recited, "Ramford, ally of Harry Potter, my brother, my chosen kin," she said quickly. "He has chosen to trust you, and I trust him with my life. I choose to trust you as well. Get on my back, and I will carry you back to Hogwarts."

Ramford, too tired and shocked to argue, leapt upon Hermione's back, wrapping his arms around her human waist to keep from steady himself in his breathlessness.

Hermione reared up and tore across the green, carrying Ramford with her as she galloped at full tilt back to the school. She didn't stop at the door, instead choosing to keep running toward the North Tower from the inside. "Hold on!" she yelled, praying her hooves didn't slide across the flagstones.

She bolted down the corridors, yelling her Patronus at the same time. Otters flew in all directions, swimming off to deliver messages. She screeched to a halt, her hooves sliding and her body tilting as she skidded across the stone at the base of the North Tower. Ramford jumped off, thanking her as he had his wand out and rushed up the stairs.

Hermione stared at the small door, giving an equine squeal of frustration. Sounds of battle were coming from above her, and flashes of light were bouncing off the stone. Hermione paced as Severus, Minerva, and Firenze came running down the hallway to meet her.

Minerva, channeling her authority of Headmistress, waved her wand, and the doorway enlarged. Hogwarts shuddered. The stairs reformed as a few other professors came rushing up.

Minerva barked orders for most of them to guard the stairs in case "whatever was up there came down here." Flitwick nodded and organised the other professors into teams. Hermione, however, plunged forward like the Gryffindor she never stopped being. Severus and Firenze followed close behind.

A strange silence descended from above, and the group froze on the stairwell, very slowly creeping up the stairs. Hogwarts, having sensed Minerva's need, had rearranged the ladder stairway. Now, the stairs lead up into the room above with a gradual incline. Minerva waved her wand, silencing their feet.

Severus tapped Minerva on the sleeve, mouthing something. Minerva nodded. He waved his wand silently, disillusioning each of them. He made a gesture to Hermione, and they fell to the ground as an otter and a panther, their smaller and more stealthy forms barely discernable thanks to the disillusionment spell. Minerva, too, went into her Animagus form, leaving Firenze to creep in as stealthily as possible on his own.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Ronald Weasley was not having a good day. Somehow, he had managed to track down the culprit who had attacked Hermione by tracing the energy signature to a ratty set of robes in the Divination classroom. Ramford and Collins had joined him, and they had searched the entire room. At first they had though whatever it was had fled out the window, but Ron had noticed that the trace didn't end at the window as they had expected. Instead, it went towards the adjoining private chambers.

They had found Trelawney snoring away in her bed, buried under what could only have been twenty some duvets. Ron shook his head at the snoring as he and the team ran traces all around the room. Trelawney could apparently sleep through the apocalypse, and McGonagall had given them authorisation to do whatever they felt necessary in order to find out what had happened to Hermione.

Something had seemed off.

Strange, almost hoof-prints had been scattered across the floor of the classroom. A broken window had made it look as though something had escaped, but the trail of magic had remained here in the tower.

As the three of them found themselves back in the classroom, looking for where they had gone wrong, a nasally voice croaked at them, "I see pain in all your futures!" Trelawney stood in the doorway and flipped a switch just before everything went pear-shaped. After that, Ronald and his fellow Aurors were too busy screaming.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Minerva wasn't sure what she was looking at when she entered the room. Aurors lay strewn about the floor, enchanted table legs wrapped around each person like the legs of an octopus. The far wall was blasted out, exposing the entire room to the ramparts of the school, and Sybill Trelawney was standing in the middle of the room, vulturing over a collection of plants.

Hermione and Severus rubbed up against her, letting her know they were still beside her, under the disillusionment charms.. Both of them were taking in the sight with stunned, unmoving silence.

Trelawney stood up straight. Really straight. Never before had Minerva seen the woman in anything other than a hunched over posture. Sybill removed her thick, bug-eyed glasses to expose strangely large eyes. No, it wasn't just that they were large. The pupils were large and oval. Thick eyelashes like bristles shaded each eye. Dark pigmented skin surrounded her eyeballs, outlining her eyes with a dark brown or black. They weren't human eyes at all.

Minerva stared, every whisker on her muzzle frozen. Trelawney's thick glasses had concealed the eyes of a horse.

"I've been working on this room for years, decades even," Sybill said, her voice no longer the nasally, grinding sound it had always been before. "Originally, it was to trap Death Eaters," she explained to the trapped Aurors, "but as you can see, it trapped you just fine."

Minerva, Severus, and Hermione were on the move, slowly working their way to the fallen wands. Slowly, centimeter by centimeter, pushing them towards the trapped Aurors that had been disarmed. Minerva heard the slow pull back of a hidden bow and the muffled tck of a notch touching the bowstring.

"You weren't supposed to be here," Sybill huffed. "No one was supposed to die, but Neville was taking too long. I was the one who slipped the book into his reading shelf. I was the one who crafted the page inside the book to lead him to the centaur's sacred little flowers. I knew he would take it to that horrible know-it-all Granger to get it analysed. I knew she would bat her eyelashes at that Death Eater reject and get him to help her with it. It was only a matter of time before they found a way to extract the sap and collect the pollen. Stubborn little flowers refused to open for me. They never did. Decades, I've tended them, and they just hang their flower buds and never bloom."

Trelawney threw off the outer shawl she was wearing, and she suddenly looked so much thinner, taller, and more arrogant. She pulled out a flask. Red, silver, and green blood swirled within. It was Hermione's blood.

"The first flower I found had been damaged," Trelawney said conversationally, shaking the flask. She picked up a nearby moonflower and stroked it with her fingers. "It was dying, but I was kind to it, and it gave me something… a vision. Long had I coveted my ancestor's Seer powers, but until that moment, I had never truly Seen anything. It told me of a boy who would rise to be the Dark Lord's doom. I used that vision to get the old fool to hire me. He knew I had not inherited my family's powers, but that night—oh, that night—I convinced him I was special. I convinced him he was wrong."

I knew I had found my key to real visions. I scoured the forests for more of the flowers while the war raged on," Sybill giggled in a sing-song voice. "I found a centaur named Rockhoof. He was coming in to join the local herd. I captured him, changed his memories. Made him think that a human had killed his mate hundreds of years ago. I filled him with hate and then let him go, stirring up the herd to bar all humans from their lands. It made it so much easier to sneak in, dig up the flowers, and leave, knowing they would protect my little flowering secret. It would have stayed a secret," she said through gritted teeth, "if that bitch hadn't made peace with the centaur." She throttled the plant in her hand, and the plant writhed in her grip. She tore it out of the dirt like one would repot a mandrake and stabbed the plant with a syringe, drawing out the silver and green sap.

The moonflower let out an equine scream, its flowerbud shaking, its leaves trembling, and its vines writhing and lashing out at her hand, but she throttled it tightly. Sybill sneered, pulling out every bit of fluid as she crushed the flower bud. A small spurt of pollen dropped down into the vial as the plant went completely limp. The last sound it made was a sad, droning whinny.

Minerva heard Firenze's bow snap back, and she quickly ran over to where he was and rubbed up against his leg over and over, trying to snap him out of the rage she knew he was fighting a losing battle against. Fortunately, it seemed, she got through. She heard the bow string relax.

"That horrible little Muggle-born bitch," Sybill seethed as she injected the plant sap into the mix of Hermione's blood. "She gets the flowers to bloom. She gets them to not only volunteer their sap and pollen, but they give her a gift. The full gift. Not this half-baked gift from a defective, dying flower that could only give me a taste of what I could have been!"

Trelawney tore away the robes covering her lower legs, exposing human upper legs and almost-horse lower legs. "She has annoyed me from the day she walked out of my classroom, dismissing my class as something less important. I sent photographs of her pretty little horse body to her parents, hoping they would shun her like she shunned my class, but they still loved her. They still accepted her! Oh, but soon, enough, they will have to accept that she is dead, if they even find out at all—considering that all of you will not be alive to report it!" Sybill kicked one of the nearby Aurors, leering down at them with wild, insane, animal eyes.

"But, I know the secret now— she and her infatuated Death Eater friend's blood. I will take their precious blood of Chiron. I will make myself a Seer. People will flock to me like they come to the old guru on the mountain top. I will counsel Purebloods and Kings, and I will get what I have deserved."

Trelawney took one of the magical syringes that Minerva recognised from the Hospital Wing. Poppy had used it to magically infuse potions into the blood of her patients when they were unconscious and unable to drink them. Sybill sucked up the mixture of blood, sap, and pollen, and, before Minerva or anyone else had an inkling of what she was going to do with it, stabbed herself in the gut and pushed in the plunger.

Sybill grunted, laughing hysterically. She threw the plunger against the wall as she threw back her head and arms. "At last! I can see EVERYTHING!" She let out a mad cackle. "Including YOU!"

She waved her wand, incanting. Suddenly all the Auror's wands went flying out the open wall. The Disillusionment spell was broken. Firenze managed to get one arrow off, but it only managed to pin Trelawney to the table in front of her. Minerva let out a terrified meow as Sybill waved her wand and sent Minerva flying over the ledge. Hermione let out a squeak of surprise as she was slammed into Severus' mouth. Severus twitched and writhed to fight the compulsion to clamp his jaws around Hermione's otter body and kill her. Firenze gave an equine roar as his legs were swept out from under him, and one of the nearby tables came to life and enveloped him in a magical prison.

Trelawney chortled into the table. "So predictable. No one ever expects Sybill Trelawney, poor vacant and untalented Trelawney, to actually have a plan. She began to push herself up off the table with a grunt. "Pity the Headmistress fell to her death. No one will be around to refute that a horrible, horrible monster swooped down and took out the wall of the tower. The Aurors fought so bravely, but—" She slapped her hand to her face. "Alas, they all died saving poor, defenceless Trelawney."

A malicious grin spread across her face. "I will stagger down the stairs, dazed and confused. No one will ever think I could be anything else. No one, until it's too late."

Sybill frowned as she realised her sleeve was caught on the desk by Firenze's arrow. She tried to jerk it free, but it was held fast. Frowning, she tried to slide out of the robe, but that was when she noticed that the vines from the nearby plants were curling around her wrist. Firenze's arrow had company.

Snarling, she took out her wand and cast a spell to sever the vines, but it reflected back on her, cutting into her shoulder. Sybill cried out, clutching her shoulder. More vines were creeping up her arm, dragging her down, and Sybill tried to wrench herself free, crying out in agony as the pain in her wounded shoulder protested.

Low, angry, whispers came from the moonflowers on the table. Vines began to reach out,moving across the table and slithering around Trelawney's body.

The buds of the flowers were opening, but instead of golden yellow pollen, dark red pollen puffed out of each flower and formed angry horses that galloped into the air and slammed into her open wound. Sybill twitched and writhed, the vines pulling her into the mass on the table. The flowers burst from their pots, covering her body, slithering under her robes, and tightening around her flesh.

The moonflowers shook their heads, the horse-shaped flowers were tinted with dark purple as black sap oozed from their inner "mouth." The vines covered Trelawney completely as rivers of black and purple sap flowed over her skin and the dark, moving vines multiplied and layered themselves around her body.

A thunder of low, angry whispers filled the room as Trelawney's screams peaked. Heat blasted outward, toppling over the few things in the room that were still standing, burning away the magic that held each of Trelawney's victims captive,and filling the room with darkness as black as pitch.

Then, there was silence.

-o-o-o-o-o-

The first thing Severus did when he was able to move was spit out Hermione, thankful that Trelawney's spells hadn't forced him to eat her while he was in his panther form. It would have been a horrible way to break the engagement, and he really didn't want Hermione haunting him for the rest of his life as the "git who ate me while I was an otter."

Hermione shook her body off before changing back into her centaur form. She bolted to the open wall and kneeled down to the stone floor, reaching out into the darkness.

Minerva meowed pathetically as Hermione pulled her against her warm body and hugged her and the scrap of curtain she had managed to cling to for however long. Cats apparently did have multiple lives or astounding luck. Perhaps, it was both.

Severus took his centaur form once more and helped Firenze up, and they worked together to smash the table parts off of the Auror team. Whatever Trelawney had done to rig the room to catch Death Eaters, it had worked just smashingly on the Aurors. Each of them had been beaten soundly and then drugged into a non-combative state. Sybill had covered all of the bases.

By the time Potter, Weasley, Ramsford and Collins had recovered enough to stop drooling over each other, each of them stared at the massive cocoon of vines and leaves in the middle of the Divination classroom.

"Will she become a centaur?" Minerva asked, worried.

Firenze shook his head. "I do not think so, Minerva," he said lowly. "Can you not feel it? The anger? The flowers create centaurs in love."

Harry, rubbing the large goose egg on his noggin, tried to stand and immediately sat back down. "Ugh," he groaned. "Like a bludger to the head. I flew back up here with Collins, and I was stabbed with something in the back. I could hear everything, but I couldn't move."

"Trelawney had a hospital potion syringe," Severus noted. "She must have used it first on all of you."

"I was attacked by a bloody table," Collins grunted. "Five bloody tables." He picked a piece of porcelain out of his hair, "and apparently a vase."

Ron groaned. "I saw Trelawney, and things went flying around the room like a whirlwind. I dodged a few, shielded from some others, but then—the tables got me."

"Do we have to report this?" Ramsford moaned. "I don't want to have to report that a team of four Aurors just got our wands handed to us by possessed furniture."

Severus' eyebrow went into his hair. "She had been preparing this room for years. Now we know why she was always so secretive, why she never wanted to move into the regular quarters on the lower levels, and why she never invited anyone up for tea."

Minerva rubbed her head. "Albus is turning in his grave, I'm sure," she commented. "He was so sure that her prophecy was real."

"It was real," Firenze said. "For a moment, she was given the sight of the centaur Seer. Her prophecy was real."

"That explains why she never had others after it," Minerva said. "No matter how much Albus wanted something more telling, the only great prophecy she gave us was the one for Mr Potter, though I suppose the one regarding Pettigrew was also correct."

Harry rubbed his head. "What happened to her? Why was she… changed?"

Firenze frowned. "I can only guess, but, when she found the damaged and trampled flower, she was kind to it, so it wanted to give her something positive. It gave her a vision. She wasn't happy with the one vision. She wanted more, but when she took more flowers, they didn't bloom for her. She tried to force one, but it did that to her. Changing her eyes and her feet. Maybe that is how she managed to get a few real prophecies, minor ones, after Harry's. She figured something was missing, so she spent years raising the flowers in secret up here in the tower. She couldn't get them to bloom, so she planted the book with the information for Neville. He never managed to get them to bloom either, but then Neville brought the plants to Hermione and Severus, hoping for a cure for his parents. She realised, when Hermione and Severus were changed, that the key she wanted was in them."

"So she attacked Hermione," Ron said, "for her blood."

Firenze nodded. "The one ingredient she hadn't been able to procure—the blood of the Changed."

Hermione approached the writhing mass of black tentacles and angry moonflowers. "We shouldn't just leave her under there," she sighed.

"I'm not sure we should touch them," Firenze warned. "Just as they passed judgement over you, so too have they judged her."

"To what end?" Hermione said in distress, "to digest her?"

Suddenly, the pile of tentacles and foliage shuddered and shrank away.

Each of the gathered gasped as Trelawney's body fell out from the strange cocoon.

Sprawled on the floor of the classroom was a old, grey, broodmare. Her eyes were milky in half-blindness. Her ears were tattered. Barely any hair remained in her mane, and her tail was in a sad state of affairs. Her sides heaved and her lips pulled back from elongated buckteeth. Her pelt was a ragged and pitted as her fur thinned in patches across her coat. Even Rose Weasley would have had a hard time finding love for this particular horse.

Severus tapped his finger to his jaw. "Well… she did say she would get exactly what she deserved."

Harry and Ron exchanged glances.

"One of us has to write this up," Harry said grimly.

All four Aurors threw out their hands and bounced their fist in rapid succession in the ancient art of decision making: stone, cloak, and wand.

Ron moaned as his stone lost to cloak in the final battle. "Why do I always lose?" he complained.

"Consider it a win for you, Mr Weasley," Severus said, deadpan.

Ron looked up, confused.

"The other three have to figure out how to get a horse to the Wizengamot," Severus completed his train of thought.

Harry, Ramsford, and Collins facepalmed together, Minerva grinned like a Cheshire Cat, and the three centaur breathed out a sigh of relief. Meanwhile, the moonflowers behind Hermione and Severus' ears nickered cheerfully.

Suddenly, Hermione's ears flattened to the side as she jumped a ways off the ground. Her eyes went wide.

"What is it, Hermione?" Severus asked, concerned.

Hermione took his hands and slowly placed them on her equine sides.

Severus' eyes widened as the faint ripple of movement kicked out from her belly.

Within minutes the old, grey broodmare was forgotten as everyone else took turns pressing their heads and hands to Hermione's equine sides.

Minerva, having satisfactorily felt the kick of new life in Hermione's womb, turned to the gasping, panting, and sagging, old broodmare. "Sybill Trelawney, I fear as Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, I must inform you that your job has been terminated."

The dilapidated old mare could only make distressed sounds in reply.

-o-o-o-o-o-

 **A/N:** Whoa, who saw that coming? Did I surprise any of you with that? No one expects anything of Sybill Trelawney. It's the perfect cover.


	9. Chapter 9 Aftermath (Epilogue)

A/N: This is what happens after a bug-eyed lunatic tries to take over… and fails.

Beta Love: fluffpanda, the terminally overworked

 **The Heart of the Herd**

 **Aftermath**

Months passed without drama, and for that, many of the residents of Hogwarts were undeniably happy. Stories of Trelawney were the talk of the Wizarding community for more months than any gossip before it. Speculations about whether the Seer bloodlines ended with Sybill's ancestors mixed with the highly watched trial of Sybill the broodmare in front of the Wizengamot.

Healers had descended upon Trelawney. Teams of specialist Aurors tried to determine if her change was Dark magic, despite Harry's team telling them it wasn't. The last remaining moonflower was taken from Trelawney's old room for analysis, but, much to the centaurs' relief, the moonflower "played dumb" and refused to do anything out of the ordinary. When samples of sap and pollen were taken, it was found completely inert. When they finally released the plant as an "exquisite flower with no out of the ordinary properties," Hermione and Severus squelched their opinions and kept them to themselves.

Their Transformation was deemed "a fluke crossing of magic mixed with the Divine, which none of us have tools of measuring." Magorian had lifted a brow at this, but was happy that no one would be trudging into the forests looking to steal moonflowers for either their healing properties or their potential to create Seers.

Once the moonflower was safe in Hermione's hands, it perked back up, sending happy whickers of greeting to the flowers in Hermione's mane. Once they were out of sight, the happy moonflower sent its tendrils into Hermione's mane and joined the others, no sign of the transformative anger that its brethren had wielded against Trelawney.

Trelawney, whether faking it or not, was deemed a horse. Showing none of the signs of sentience, the Wizengamot sentenced her to life as a horse, fitting her with a very special magic-suppression halter. It was precautionary, they said, in case the transformation was temporary. As it turned out, the only one who wanted to take care of Sybill was Rubeus Hagrid.

The half-giant tended and fed her until she looked less like a sack of bones, used some sort of strange toothpaste on her teeth to whiten them up, gave her a horse blanket to cover up her naked patches, and then teamed up with Aberforth in Hogsmeade to make the very first Public Wizarding Magical Farm.

Amongst the more magical animals that really were harmless, Trelawney worked by giving rides to young wizards and witches like Rose. She was attended to by a small herd of Aberforth's goats to keep her company, and it didn't take long before Sybill the horse was just a lazy old mare at the petting zoo. Thanks to Hagrid's loving care, Sybill was both fit and sound for real work, and Aberforth rented her out to Wizarding farmers who needed to plough their gardens. Sybill Trelawney's story passed into history as "the Witch Who Wanted."

There were some who believed Sybill did get exactly what she had deserved. Whether she was aware of her situation, however, remained to be seen.

-o-o-o-o-o-

Hermione was lying on her side, her chest heaving from the enormous amount of effort she had put herself through. Her eyes were half-lidded as she panted. Severus had her hand, and moonflowers were drooped across her back as though they had taken part of the effort of foaling with her.

Astra, who had made the journey specifically to be there for Hermione, nickered softly as two front legs appeared out the birth canal first, sill covered in the birth sac. The human head, connected to the miniature human torso poked out. Severus crooned to Hermione as Astra grabbed ahold to assist, gently helped ease the folded bundle of centaur foal out from the birth canal, pulling free the birthing sac so the foal did not fight for air. Once the front end was free and breathing. the rest came quite easily. Hermione gave a large heave, and out came the rest of the foal.

The shaky creature lay on the ground, wobbly and disoriented, but Astra wasted no time. She rubbed the foal vigorously, cleaning off the birthing fluids and the remains of the sac. A mare named Dandelion nickered softly as she helped clean, dry, and fasten a warm blanket coat over the new foal.

Hermione groaned softly, and Severus rubbed her back and shoulders, offering his mate a bowl of specially brewed tea to relax her after her ordeal. He petted her hair and mane, whispering words of comfort into her ears as he pressed his aquiline nose into her hair.

The foal, tiny in comparison to dam and sire, let out a tiny squeak of a yawn. Her pointed ears flicked, and she shook her bottlebrush tail. Her hair was as black as pitch, but her coat was deep honey-gold. She had a distinctive dorsal stripe like her dam, jet black legs, and pale human skin like her sire. Subtle, almost zebra-like stripes adorned the back of her legs, and her equine shoulder had a patch of pure white fur shaped liked the petal of a moonflower. Down her forehead, her skin was pigmented with a distinctive star, stripe, and snip. Her eyes were a dark brown, seemingly landing in between her dam and her sire's . She let out a tiny, miniature neigh as she attempted to stand, her wobbly legs both assisting and fighting against her at the same time.

And suddenly, the glen was alive with foals. All the herd younglings surrounded the new arrival, pressing their bodies against the newcomer and assisting her in gaining her legs. They whickered to her, pressing against her gently to both lend their aid as well as give her the touch of the herd.

Magorian arrived with a bowl of pigment. He nickered softly to the new foal, pressing his nose to hers with a gentle touch and snort of air. The little filly made a soft whinny, tail swishing back and forth excitedly. He used his thumb to draw a mark across her forehead in earthen pigment. "Your sire and your dam have named you Laelynn, which means 'flower of hope,' little one," Magorian said with a low nicker. May you grow strong in leg and mind until you step out from the shadow of your parents as your own creation. May you never know loneliness; may the herd forever bring your comfort, and may you one day bring comfort to those like yourself who are new unto the world."

Astra knelt down and painted a lighter pigment down Laelynn's back, mirroring her dorsal stripe. "You are the product of love, little Laelynn. Your sire and your dam are now true mates on a lifelong journey that includes you. May the stars ever watch over you. May the planets forever steer your course to safety, and may you ever have peace in your mind as Chiron intended."

Both Astra and Magorian smiled as the little filly took her first strong steps, and then bounded around the glen to test her legs. She shook her mane and bucked, kicking out her legs. Then, suddenly tired, she folded herself up against her dam and began to take her first meal.

Hermione, tired after her delivery, let out a content sigh, snuggling into Severus as he stroked her back. He stared at the tangle of legs that was their new daughter, the start of a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

Then, in true centaur fashion, the herd settled in around the new family.

"You are now true mates under the stars and in the eyes of the herd," Magorian told Severus as he watched over the herd. "The planets have blessed your union with a foal. Do you feel any different?"

Severus continued to massage Hermione's back. "Grateful," he said calmly, his black eyes filled with emotion.

Magorian clapped him on the shoulder. "Then you are truly blessed." The elder centaur looked skyward. "I know humans like to exchange rings and stand on ceremony when it comes to being mated, but amongst the centaur birth is the most ritualised of times. Becoming mates is natural progression, whose only test is whether one's sire approves of his filly's suitor enough to allow them to live long enough to mate."

Firenze snorted nearby, his face twisted in amusement as he remembered his being chased across the moors by an angry centaur father. Severus' face twisted into something between amusement and horror.

"Since your circumstances are so rare, child," Astra said. "We have discussed amongst us and decided to bleed a little of your old human traditions with ours. She handed a wrapped bundle over to Magorian.

Magorian unfolded the bundle to expose two circlets. Each were crafted of what seemed like living tendrils and Goblin silver. "We have discussed with our allies, the goblins, and come up with a compromise. The circlet is created in the living tendrils of the sacred moonflower. Astra has prayed over and asked for volunteers in which to weave themselves around the silver. The silver is in tribute to the stars and moon, that they may forever light your way in darkness."

Severus swallowed hard, staring at the two matching circlets. They were beautiful. It was obvious that both the centaur and the goblins had put a lot of love into them—love, care, and consideration to the human tradition of needing some token of the bond between mates. There was also the unspoken respect both species had for the work Hermione had done for them. If it hadn't been for her, the centaur and goblins wouldn't have been allies.

Severus bowed his head reverently, allowing Magorian to place the circlet on his head. He felt the tendrils slither under his hair as the vines entwined with each other, gently pulling taut against his skin. He felt a warmth there, almost as if it was breathing against him.

Hermione, breathing slowly against him, lowered her head. Magorian gently placed the circlet on her head. It slid taut against her skin just as it had against his. As both circlets were in place, the moonflowers in their manes started to nicker softly, sending their tendrils over to join with the circlet. Severus felt them join up in a surge of warmth, and the small pollen horses pranced in the air around their heads and drifted away in the breeze. Whatever magic allowed the plant to decide it no longer needed dirt was a miracle in itself. They had learned that there was far more to the magical plants than they had expected, and somehow, they had been molded into the perfect host environment. The flowers had chosen Hermione and Severus, and as a reward for their service as a living host, they had given them a new life with each other. When Severus thought about it, it wasn't a bad trade at all.

Severus startled and looked behind him. The foals were weaving some sort of beaded tail ornament over the base of his tail and into Hermione's. They giggled and smiled at him. Every time his tail moved, the beads tinkled together like a windchime.

Firenze smiled at him. "How does it feel to be… how do the humans put it… married with… foal?"

Severus snorted. "A lot less hoops to jump through trying to get Shacklebolt to clear his schedule."

"Do you wish to have a human wedding, brother?" Firenze asked.

Severus looked down at the small foal nestled between Hermione's legs. Laelynn yawned toothlessly, her bottle-brush tail wagging back and forth. She snuggled up against Hermione as the other foals snuggled up close to her. Severus shook his head. "Everything is just fine as it is."

"Mmfmfgh mmfmfph mm ffhfhlph," Hermione mumbled into him.

Severus raised a brow at his mate.

Hermione looked up sleepily at Severus. "Tomorrow we go and register at the Ministry so we can share your name," she murmured into his chest. Her eyes drifted closed sleepily, and she slumped, utterly exhausted.

Severus let out his breath slowly, his eyes filled with emotion. His hand wove into her hair as he stroked it.

There was really only one thing he could say.

"Okay," he whispered, staring down at his mate and foal.

Astra and Magorian bumped shoulders as they watched the newest family unit settle.

"You owe me a jug of apple cider," Astra nickered to Magorian.

Magorian sighed and slumped his shoulders. "You always win predictions on the number and colours of the foals. I don't know why I even try."

"Sucker for punishment," Astra said with a wink.

"You're a cheater," Magorian accused. "You're a Seer."

"I utilise my assets," Astra said with a grin.

"Mares," Magorian said with a sniff, turning his head away.

Astra nudged the stallion with her elbow and whispered into his ear. "We can bet on how long it takes Oakleaf and Firenze to admit they are interested in each other."

Magorian's ears perked towards her, a grin spreading across his face.

-o-o-o-o-o-

"Mr Longbottom," Severus snapped at the pacing Herbology professor. "If you do not stop wearing a hole into the flagstones of Hogwarts, I will be forced to affix you to that seat over there by your rear."

Neville, who seemed to be conditioned to balk at Snape's orders, whatever they might be, sat down and crossed his legs as he sat on his hands.

The little foal that was clinging to Severus' legs neighed at Neville, giving a sharp snort and a toss of her head.

"I think you've just been told off by a foal," Minerva said with a chuckle.

Neville rubbed his temples. "I was hoping the lessons on how to terrorize me would at least wait a couple of years."

Minerva raised an eyebrow. "Impossible," she chuckled. "Have you met the parents?"

Neville groaned.

Meadowrun, Briarfoot, and Flint nickered invitingly to the youngest Hogwarts foal, and Laelynn ran to them, making happy sounds. They smiled and patted her, guiding her to help with the task at hand. Slowly, each of the placed a small planter with a moonflower next to the newly transferred Mr and Mrs Frank and Alice Longbottom. Poppy clucked her teeth as she made sure they were comfortable.

The elder Longbottoms were, thankfully, not having an episode on this particular afternoon, and they lay still in the beds instead of tearing out hair and trying to beat on the walls. Neville had expressed gratitude for that. Hogwarts patients really didn't need his parents causing a commotion and rattling them up.

Hermione had guessed that the flowers had to get to know the Longbottoms before they could give any sort of volunteer aide, and both Severus and she believed the possible "cure" would require the combination of sap, pollen, and Hermione and Severus' blood, which had to be given willingly to work. Anything else, they guessed, would have detrimental effects like they had on Trelawney. Both Professor Snapes had emphasized that there was a chance the flowers would not respond.

Unfortunately, the experiment had started out badly, as Alice Longbottom snatched up one of the curious moonflowers and tried to eat it. The distressed flower let out a pained whinny, sending centaur scrambling to assist. Neville managed to rescue the chewed on moonflower before his mother could do more damage, and the look of panicked horror on Neville's face told all. He soothed the flower petals with his hand, rubbing the delicate flowers with his fingers to unwrinkle the bite marks of his mother's teeth, whispering apologies to the flower the entire time. The victimised moonflower seemed to respond to the soothing, and the first step towards creating a relationship between the flowers and a non-centaur slowly began to form.

Neville, Hermione, Severus, and Firenze took turns keeping watch over Neville's parents and the flowers, keeping their senses tuned for any sign of the flowers responding to the Longbottoms in a positive manner. Between the classes and watching over Neville's parents, Neville began to have a greater appreciation for those that took care of his parents day after day at Saint Mungo's.

There were times when the couple were placid, but there were other times when Poppy had to run over and provide tranquilising spells so they wouldn't hurt each other or anyone else in their waking nightmare. Each time an episode started, if Neville was around, the ex Auror turned Herbologist looked as though his entire world was breaking. His goal had always been for his children to know their grandparents in a way he had not, and each time his parents tore at their hair and started to scream, his eyes would fill with pain. He confessed to Hermione one night as they shared the vigil that it wasn't about him anymore. He had long accepted that the parents he dreamed of as a child could never be. His childhood was over, but his new daughter and child on the way still had time. He wanted his children to know his parents, and he wanted his parents to know their grandchildren.

Laelynn kicked Neville in the kidneys with her rear hoof.

"Ow!" Neville exclaimed, "what was that for?"

The little black and honey coloured filly crossed her arms across her chest and snorted at him.

Laelynn, in true centaur fashion, had no verbal language, save that of the equine variety at her age. She obviously had something to say, however, for her glare was taken out of the Snape Family Manual. She snorted at him, tail flipping as she stomped her hoof.

Neville stared at her blankly.

Laelynn rolled her eyes in a spitting image of her father. She trotted over to where Alice Longbottom was staring off into space and bumped her head under the woman's arm and snuggled up next to her, nickering softly.

Alice's hand slowly went across the little filly's head and ears, soothing them as one would a cat, but something passed across her eyes at the contact—something sane. Her face went peaceful, her eyes both far away, but also at ease. Mrs Longbottom's head gently lay across the filly's back as her arms went around her torso.

The little filly stared at Neville as if to make a point, her dark eyes ever as intimidating as her parents'.

Neville, chastened, seemed to have realised the lesson the little filly was trying to give him. Slowly, awkwardly, he lay his head against his mother's lap as a child would a parent. Laelynn wiggled out from under Alice Longbottom and moved her towards Neville, nickering softly as the elder Longbottom stroked her son's hair.

As the little filly trotted back towards Hermione, who was discussing something in depth with Poppy Pomfrey, the moonflowers positioned around the room opened slightly, sending small, almost invisible strands of pollen into the air. A soft, whispering chain of nickers carried on the breeze.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-

The first definite sign of cooperation on the moonflower's part was when one of the flowers wove into each of the Longbottom's hair. They weren't bonded to them as they were with Hermione and Severus, but they released their pollen horses to prance around them. Another sign was that each of the volunteer flowers seemed to be "drooling" a steady trickle of sap against the Longbottom's head.

Hermione and Severus sprang into motion. Poppy drew their blood, and they made a distillation of healing factors from it. Poppy infused it into one of her healing balms and began to apply it every day. Meanwhile, Neville took his lessons from the Snape filly and embraced his parents as often as possible, attempting to bridge the chasm that had formed between them due to so many things that had been beyond their control.

The Hogwarts foals found a new purpose, thanks to Laelynn, and each took turns providing a comforting touch with Neville's parents when he was not there. Poppy commented she had never seen such studious students. Each of the foals took places with the Longbottoms and then chattered away as they did their homework. Laelynn joined the other foals as often as she could, taking turns between gluing herself to her dam's side and wanting to be social with the other foals. The Hogwarts foals happily socialised with her, teaching her both intentionally and not. Laelynn went around mimicking the mannerisms of all she saw, whether it was centaur or not. She followed Poppy around closely, latched onto Minerva when she passed by, and then dove back between her dam's legs when hunger and sleepiness outweighed her great curiosity. Her ability to charm and disarm managed to destroy the defences of all she aimed her miniature nicker at. No one was more disarmed than Argus Filch, who cracked the first smile anyone could remember seeing from him in decades.

Laelynn scooped up Mrs Norris and hugged the cranky old cat like a favourite toy. She would place Mrs Norris on her back and give her rides around the halls, and then, as Filch ran up to rescue his familiar, she would hug Argus… in front of witnesses.

Laelynn would whinny cheerfully, hugging Severus' legs as if daring someone to say anything.

No one did.

Then, one day, when Neville came in to relieve Hermione from her night vigil, he found all the foals curled up next to her as she slept. A stack of graded papers lay beside her, and a part of Neville realised he had unintentionally dragged the entire Hogwarts centaur population as well as people like Poppy and Minerva into helping with his parents.

A stab of panic filled him as he saw the moonflowers had left their vigil around his parents. They were covered in a fine coating of golden pollen, but the flowers themselves had inched their way into Hermione's mane and tail to join the others.. Had they given up on his parents? Neville's hands trembled. Suddenly Trelawney's desperation to acquire the plant's magical blessing became so much more understandable, and he hated himself for even thinking about forcing a magical plant into helping him. Despair warred with his inner measure of sense.

"How do we always end up here, Frank?" Alice's voice asked into the air, freezing Neville in place. "We always end up in a hospital bed."

Frank let out a low grunt. "One word? Dumbledore."

Alice let out a low sigh. "I feel like we just had the worst or best bender of our lives."

"Both," Frank moaned. "I hope mother isn't angry watching Neville while we're out like this."

"Again," Alice said, blowing her hair out of her face.

Frank chuckled. "Again." He reached out and held his wife's hand. "The war will be over soon, love. It will be a world in which our son will be safe."

"Safe," Alice answered. "I like the sound of that."

Neville winced as one black and honey filly stomped on his foot. "Ow!" He stared down at the filly who stared back at him with her lips pursed and her jaws set in Snape-like fashion. She took both arms and pushed him forward.

"Oh, Darling, we have company," Alice said, attempting to sit up in the bed. "Hi, I'm Alice. This is Frank. He looks familiar, Frank. Don't you agree?"

"You seem familiar, son," Frank said cheerfully, holding his wife's hand. "I fear the war has us a bit under the weather. Are you a part of the Order? So many new faces. Hard to keep track. Is the fighting still going on?"

Neville staggered forward, swallowing hard. "I'm Neville," he said carefully.

"Neville? Frank, he has our son's name," Alice said cheerfully. "We have a son. He's barely a year yet. He loves bubblegum wrappers. I have to watch him so carefully because he'll unwrap every one and plaster his crib with them. He doesn't even want the gum."

Frank laughed. "He'll get better, dear. Mum said when I was a young tike, I used to use treacle tarts as frisbees. I think what was most disturbing is that they worked."

Alice laughed, it was a genuine, warm laugh that filled Neville with lighthearted love. He had never heard such a sound from his mother before.

"How is the war?" Frank said with a serious expression."Dumbledore said it would be over soon. We just had to press on a little more… hang in there a little more."

Neville swallowed. Laelynn nudged him with her equine shoulder and nickered.

"Oh my goodness, a centaur child," Alice's eyes went wide. "Hello," she whispered, holding her hands out.

Laelynn smiled, nickering, happily trotting forward for a hug. Laelynn had never known danger, and she had never known a person she didn't like, and Neville saw the young filly work her magic on his parents as effectively as a spell.

"What's you name, beautiful child?" Alice asked, exchanging wondered looks with Frank.

Laelynn tilted her head, ears twitching. She whinnied.

"Her name's Laelynn," Neville said softly. "Laelynn Snape."

"Snape?" Alice tilted her head. "That can't be a common name."

She and Frank exchanged glances.

Frank shook his head. "It can't be who we are thinking, love," Frank said. "We know for a fact that the Snape we know doesn't...isn't..." Frank fidgeted, perhaps looking for the right words.

Laelynn whinnied loudly, snorting at Frank.

"No insult to you, little one," Frank apologised.

Neville slowly ushered the little filly back towards her herd, suddenly realising he was being watched intently by Hermione. The centaur witch missed nothing, and nickered for the foals to attend her as she led them out of the hospital wing. Hermione bowed her head to Neville as she left, pausing only a moment for her foal to suckle before she exited.

Neville took in a deep breath. "The war you remember has ended," Neville said slowly. "Some of the people you thought were fighting for you were not… fighting for you. There are things you need to to know, but there is something even more important."

"What could be more important than what we are fighting for, Mr—?"

" _When_ you are fighting," Neville said after a moment. He shifted in discomfort. "Longbottom," Neville answered his father with a grim smile. "My name is Neville Longbottom.

Frank and Alice's jaw's dropped to the floor.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

"It's going to take them some time to adjust, Neville," Poppy said with an understanding smile. "Unlike so many other times, they will adjust and they will remember. It's quite a miracle."

Neville smiled awkwardly. "I never thought I'd see them so… happy. They don't remember anything since before they were attacked, and I am so grateful for that. Mother started crying when she realised she'd missed my birthdays—my life...growing up."

"How is Hannah doing, Neville? How's she taking it?" Poppy asked.

"She's beyond happy," Neville gushed. "She's been so supportive, even when it's taken me away from she and the baby. I felt so guilty, but…"

Poppy smiled. "Neville, you've never been able to resolve that situation with your parents. It's been hanging over you for as long as I've known you. But, now you can move on, build a life, and include them. Does your mum know, about the baby? Alicia?"

Neville shook his head. "Not yet. Mum has no idea we used part of her name to name the baby. She doesn't even know Hannah and I had a baby...yet. They just found out that their son has grown up and is married. I figured that was enough for now."

Poppy chuckled. "Grandparents are more resilient than you think, Neville, but everything in due time."

"Mum and Dad saw the goblin students and the centaur foals chatting in the courtyard when they were being escorted out and almost freaked out," Neville said. "Sirius and Remus are taking a few days to help them adjust. They are two of few left from back when…"

Poppy patted him on the shoulder. "It will be fine, Neville. You'll see."

Neville smiled. "Finally, I think I believe it."

-o-o-o-o-o-

Severus and Hermione walked side-by-side down the corridors of Hogwarts, enjoying the wider doorways that Hogwarts had most graciously provided. With Firenze and Oakleaf finally "courting," Severus and Hermione were only too happy to sic the foals upon them as they had once had foals sicced upon themselves. Astra and Magorian settled yet another bet with each other, and there was talk about whether the two herds could become one by the next year. In honour of the guessing contest, Hermione started an apple betting pool with the other mares on how long it would take Astra and Magorian to admit they fancied each other and if it would take as long as it took Firenze and Oakleaf to admit they were partial to each other.

Minerva hired in Oakleaf to teach Divination with Firenze, and unlike most centaurs, Oakleaf was well versed in human Divination. Even more strangely, Oakleaf made many predictions as befit a centaur with Seer's abilities, and none of them involved death, doom, or other such depressing news. The irony that Trelawney's old spot was taken by a centaur was not lost on anyone.

The centaur chambers were expanded with Oakleaf's arrival, and, much like Hermione and Severus', was soon condensed into one private chamber for the both of them. No foals were reported on the way, but Firenze blushed when Oakleaf very casually stated it "was not for lack of trying." It was Severus' turn to be smug when he looked at Firenze, deadpan, and rattled off a few "tips" to help "please his mate." Oakleaf seemed to approve of Severus, while Firenze had to eat a few pieces of humble pie for having once put Severus in a similar embarrassing conversation.

Laelynn grew like a weed, or, as Astra said, like the typical centaur filly. With the mini-herd at Hogwarts, she was never neglected, and with frequent visits to the main herd, the little filly was both spunky and ready to tackle the world… if the world would only slow down a little and let her catch up.

She ran circles around Hagrid, and seemed to have the mischief of two Weasley twins. Often she would trip the half-giant up by tying his ankles together and then dart between his legs and disappear up the path, neighing in pleasure. Severus never seemed to mind. Some even speculated as to whether he was encouraging the little filly to pick on Hagrid. No one had the gall to ask him, though.

The two professors Snape became well known across Europe amongst the centaur herds, not for their rebirth as centaur, but for their being able to heal the ails that plagued the centaur species. Wherever they walked, they seeded the sacred moonflowers, often picking up one or two new variants from their travels, then seeding new plants as they went from place to place. They lived and taught at Hogwarts, preferring to remain in the area where they had been when they found each other, staying near the Dark Forest Herd unless word came that their help was needed.

Mrs Weasley turned out to be an excellent foster granddam for the foals, and she would visit often with fresh apples from the orchard or bring apple tarts when she came. After finding the elder Weasley passed out in the middle of a pile of foals in the middle of their shared quarters, Firenze proclaimed Molly Weasley "foal approved."

One night, Hermione invited Harry and Ginny to come visit with the herd for the "supermoon," and Harry and Ginny fell asleep amongst the centaur under the stars as the elders taught the younglings the stars of their history and future. Perhaps it was a sign of some divine blessing, but all the fertile and mated mares that had been there that night had the curious scent of pregnancy about them within the week.

Hermione kept a vial of her memories of Harry's face when Severus asked him what he and Ginny were "naming their next foal." She filed it in Severus' old black sock drawer, since he wasn't using it anymore and no one would think of looking in a centaur's sock drawer for pensieve memories. Severus said she was disturbingly Slytherin when she put her mind to it.

Trelawney became the most popular ride at the Hogsmeade Magical Farm. Hogsmeade even had a Moonflower Festival every year to commemorate the peace between the centaur and humans.

Neville bred a special moonflower that looked almost identical to the actual sacred moonflower, only it was far less magically ornery and didn't insult the entire centaur race when one dug one up and carried it off. He bred them to come in a variety of colours to distinguish them from the sacred plant. Many believed his plant to be "better" due its sap being a highly effective skin tonic, but Neville never revealed the truth about the sacred horse moonflower. Hogsmeade was planted with them all over, and even in winter they seemed to bloom without regard.

Laelynn seemed to take after her parents in more ways than looks, for one morning, Severus and Hermione found that a few small "baby" moonflowers had moved into her mane and tail, rooting themselves into her as an anchor. They often nickered their approval at her when she did something nice, chomped on her ear when she did something displeasing, and acted like her traveling conscience when the herd wasn't around to do it for her. Neither herd or parents could complain that the plants seemed to be taking care of her.

Neville's parents settled down in a small cottage near Ottery St. Catchpole not so far from the Weasleys, Diggorys, Fawcetts, and the Lovegoods. Choosing a quiet life once their miraculous recovery spanned the news tabloids died down, they made a home for themselves, welcomed the peace they had only been able to dream of before their attack, and remained blissfully unaware of the pain of their torture. Augusta Longbottom seemed to take the news of her son and daughter-in-law's recovery with enthusiasm to spare. There was much screaming, tears, and disbelief. She, too, began to heal, and Neville seemed far better for it overall. His goal was done. His children would know their grandparents. Best of all, his parents would know his children and remember it the next day and the day after that.

As Hermione and Severus settled down in their private chambers, enjoying a bit of rare private time when the foals were all tackling Firenze and Oakleaf, they cuddled with each other in front of the cozy fire.

Severus pressed his lips to the curve of her neck and nickered softly.

Hermione crooned a soft reply, pulling his head down against herself as she closed her eyes.

"I am glad you are here with me, Severus," Hermione said, rubbing his scalp with her fingertips.

Severus snuffled her hair and kissed her temple. "I am glad to be here."

"Even though you have Neville to thank?" Hermione asked with amusement.

Severus let out a long-suffering sigh. "Perhaps, I am thankful we didn't end up hippogriffs or thestrals with Hagrid 'taking care of us'."

Hermione snorted, her ears twitching. The moonflowers in her mane echoed her snort, shaking their flowered heads. She snuggled into his body. "I think I would prefer you taking care of me," she mused.

Severus growled softly into her neck. "Is this an equal give and take relationship?"

Hermione crooned softly, tugging on his ears with her fingers. Her moonflowers nickered at him. "I'm a centaur, Severus. Of course, I'll share."

She tugged him by the collar and pulled his mouth to hers. "I just won't share all of you. Parts of you, I keep for myself."

Severus breathed a little heavy into her mouth, his hands pressed against her cheek. "I… I'm glad of it."

Quite some time later, when the dark of night was perhaps at its darkest and the embers of the fire were all that remained of a blazing warmth, Severus and Hermione lay together, sleeping soundly after they reaffirmed their bonds as mates. The far door gave a small creek as a chain of soft nickers filtered in.

Laelynn gave a soft whinny and trotted in brazenly, cuddling up to her dam's warm side and closing her eyes. The three other foals tentatively walked in, nickering nervously, then when sensing no admonishment, hustled up to snuggle against Hermione and Severus. They were asleep within minutes.

When Firenze and Oakleaf opened the door to peer in, curiosity itching at them when they lost their foal shadows, Firenze gave a soft chuckle and closed the door.

"Everything okay?" Oakleaf asked.

Firenze soothed his mate's mane and smiled. "One big happy family," he assured her. "Everything is as it should be." He placed his hands on his mate's sides, pressing his ear to the roundness of her abdomen.

"Soon, we shall have more foals than our herd has seen in a generation," Oakleaf said with a smile. "Truly Chiron has watched over our people."

Firenze shook his head."He watches over more than just the centaur, my love," Firenze said warmly. "If it were not for Trelawney, who once had the kindness of a dying moonflower bestow her a vision, the chain of events that gave us our brother and our sister would never have happened. Neville's parents would still be at St Mungo's, insane and uncured. My brother would still be wandering the halls of Hogwarts alone and in denial, longing for a love he felt he did not deserve. Hermione would be walking the shores of the Black Lake alone, convinced she had missed her chance at happiness, and that the one person she truly wished to be with could not love her the same."

Oakleaf smiled. "They should call you the Diviner, Firenze." she said. "Keeper of the Tangled Web. Not many centaur keep track of so many strands of Fate."

Firenze smiled. "Perhaps they were not the first centaur of this herd… blessed by a flower."

Oakleaf turned her head.

"When I was born, my coat was white," Firenze said. "As white as the fullness of the moon. I was sickly, weaker, clung to my dam like every day was my last day. She lay me in a bed of flowers, moonflowers, and prayed for Chiron to help. For the first time, I slept all night, nestled against my dam and the flowers. I woke, my coat covered in yellow pollen. It happened so often, the mares described me as a pollen foal."

Firenze looked upward to the charmed sky on the ceiling. "Then, one day, I didn't need to sleep in the flowers anymore. I could run. I could read the stars. I could see further than most. I could see forward instead of just the present and the past. My dam used to joke that I slept in the flowers so much my coat turned white, but actually it was the opposite. I slept in the embrace of the moonflowers so long that my coat turned golden. By the time my dam returned from traveling and rejoined Magorian's herd, I was already already as you see me."

Oakleaf smiled broadly. "You, too, have been blessed by Chiron."

Firenze smiled. "We have all been blessed by Him since the day we gained civility, my love," he said with a warmth that spread from him to her. "Sometimes, those like me can recognise when it is coming, though we know not how or exactly when it will happen."

"Tell me, Firenze," Oakleaf began, her hand pressed against his chest. "Did you know what the flowers would do?"

Firenze gave a knowing smile. "Nay, love. I only knew the flowers could bring them peace of mind and heart if they were ready."

Oakleaf chuckled. "From what I hear, there was some resistance."

Firenze grinned. "Sometimes what the heart knows, the head forgets. It all worked out in the end, did it not?"

Oakleaf nickered softly, nibbling on Firenze's neck. Firenze's eyes widened as other matters took priority over conversing.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

In the adjoining room, Hermione and Severus snuggled close to each other, the small tugs of a smile on each of their lips. The flowers in their manes nickered to each other as though privy to an inside joke.

Hundreds of years later, when it was a common to see both goblins and centaurs filling the halls of Hogwarts, and it was not so abnormal to see either sitting (or standing) at the high table, stories would be told of the first centaur and goblins to grace the halls of Hogwarts. It was often a story of adventure as much as it was of love. It was story of souls finding common ground. It was a tale of redemption and the healing was a legacy they left for the generations that came after.

And sometimes, when one walked down the halls of Hogwarts, someone could hear the distant nickering of small voices as tiny pollen horses cantered down the hallway and into the wind, spiraled up the tower to the current Headmaster's office, and whinnied to a portrait of the first married Headmaster and Headmistress of Hogwarts. Dark black and honey brown eyes stared out of the portrait, their bodies surrounded in hundreds of delicate white flowers.

It was said, when the skies were clear, and the moon was full, children that sneaked into the Headmaster's Office would see the ceiling go transparent, exposing the stars, and one portrait amongst the many would tell stories of both forgiveness and Fate.

Sometimes, anything was possible with a small nudge in the right direction—perhaps the tiny nudge of a flower shaped like a horse.

 _Fin._

-o-o-o-o-o-

 **Beta Love:** Sehanine, my chevalier of the Queen's English

 **A/N:** Thanks to all who have supported this story and the rampaging plot bunny that refused to leave me alone. I hope you enjoyed this centaur-focused story.


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